Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[h]

I would point out the difference between (concept) conflation vs
(technological) convergence.

To my knowledge, the meta data, i.e. the possible data about its
user-readers and user-contributors are sometimes gathered systematically
for user experience (UX) and interface testing, data analytics and research
(both in-house and external). Most of the time such metadata could be
framed as behavioral, or be aggregated as social groups.

So the questions come back to us, the subscribers of "Research into
Wikimedia content and communities". Have we generated some type of *revenue
from mining its user contributed data*?

I would thus suggest using the term meta-data to describe any user
data/patterns that can be mined from the basic edit data points. It is
better not to conflate the two because the latter one has clearer social
contract (submit this and you agree these). The two may be converging
because of the technological tools we may have as researchers, or the next
Talk page system, or the some metric systems to measure content and/or
users. Such converging only demonstrates the increasing complexity of the
data eco-system but does not grant us the leisure of conceptual conflation.

What does the action of hitting the edit/submit button entail for data
governance? Some how I still think a distinction does exist between the
edit data and the other contextual data (time stamps, ids, etc.) and
derived meta data.



2014-09-04 23:07 GMT+02:00 Brian Keegan :

> Also some coverage here in the Economist:
> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/09/science-web
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:32 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
>> Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.
>>
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html
>>
>> ___
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>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D.
> Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab
> College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University
> Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University
> Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
>
> b.kee...@neu.edu
> www.brianckeegan.com
> M: 617.803.6971
> O: 617.373.7200
> Skype: bckeegan
>
> ___
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Brian Keegan]

Also some coverage here in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/09/science-web


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:32 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.
>
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html
>
> ___
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> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>


-- 
Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab
College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University
Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University
Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School

b.kee...@neu.edu
www.brianckeegan.com
M: 617.803.6971
O: 617.373.7200
Skype: bckeegan
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Stuart A. Yeates]

>> On 4 Sep 2014, at 9:53 am, "Stuart A. Yeates"  wrote:
>>
>> What I think we really need is better standardisation of description

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Kerry Raymond  wrote:
> Hmm, a meta data standard. there must be a few dozen on the shelf to pick 
> from ...

There's more to standardisation than writing standards. Often
implementing a checker / validator is much more useful in propagating
compliance.

cheers
stuart

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Ed Summers]

On Sep 4, 2014, at 12:54 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> e more common descriptor for that is "content generated by users" since "data 
> collected from users" usually refers to data about the user. Just one more 
> example of how a non-standard use of language can cause confusion.  

It’s a pretty blurry line that separates the two, since the content we generate 
is pretty good at describing us. But I see your point that Wikimedia Foundation 
does not generate revenue from mining its user contributed data and selling it 
for purposes, other than making the worlds best, free encyclopedia (for which 
it will happily accept donations).

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Benj. Mako Hill]

> For all intents and purposes, we have our own DERP right here.  We
> have a public mailing list.  We support volunteer & external
> researchers access to data (and we're actively working to make that
> easier[1]).  We hold regular outreach events (like the Research
> Hackathon @ Wikimania).  We're also organizing outreach events with
> other open ecosystem online communities.  For example, we have
> CSCW'15 workshop proposal submitted, and assuming it is accepted,
> we'll have participants from Imgur, Reddit and Zooniverse.

I think this is right. 

The goal of DERP, as I've understood it, is to provide a more clear
way to interface between researchers and social media
organizations. The goal, in that sense, is to go a little bit of the
way toward helping other organizations become more like WMF in this
respect. :)

Because the infrastructure and interfacing that DERP aims to provide
is pretty similar to what WMF already does, the marginal benefit to
Wikimedia researchers may be much smaller than it will be for people
interested in working with all of the other DERP data providers.

Of course, that's no reason that WMF shouldn't participate, support,
and lend its good reputation in this space to this effort. I hope we
can figure out the logo stuff. It seems like this should be a very
small issue and a silly reason to have this fall over.

Regards,
Mako


-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto


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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Nathan]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:

>
> On Sep 4, 2014, at 11:20 AM, aaron shaw 
> wrote:
>
> Sorry Ed, I don't think we all know that. In fact, I'm unaware of any way
> in which Wikimedia makes money based on data collected from its users. To
> my knowledge, the Foundation is supported almost entirely through private
> donations[1].
>
>
> Ok, try this on for size:
>
> An edit to a Wikipedia article is data collected from its users. WMF
> receives millions of dollars of donations a year because of this data, and
> its accessibility.
>
> //Ed
>

So, the more common descriptor for that is "content generated by users"
since "data collected from users" usually refers to data *about the user. *Just
one more example of how a non-standard use of language can cause
confusion.
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Oliver Keyes]

Uhm. If you don't think there's any distinction in nature or terminology
between
'The contents of a form field intentionally filled out and submitted by a
user'  andevery other kind of data, there's a disconnect here somewhere.

On Thursday, 4 September 2014, Ed Summers  wrote:

>
> On Sep 4, 2014, at 11:20 AM, aaron shaw  > wrote:
>
> Sorry Ed, I don't think we all know that. In fact, I'm unaware of any way
> in which Wikimedia makes money based on data collected from its users. To
> my knowledge, the Foundation is supported almost entirely through private
> donations[1].
>
>
> Ok, try this on for size:
>
> An edit to a Wikipedia article is data collected from its users. WMF
> receives millions of dollars of donations a year because of this data, and
> its accessibility.
>
> //Ed
>


-- 
Sent from a portable device of Lovecraftian complexity.
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Ed Summers]

On Sep 4, 2014, at 11:20 AM, aaron shaw  wrote:
> Sorry Ed, I don't think we all know that. In fact, I'm unaware of any way in 
> which Wikimedia makes money based on data collected from its users. To my 
> knowledge, the Foundation is supported almost entirely through private 
> donations[1].

Ok, try this on for size:

An edit to a Wikipedia article is data collected from its users. WMF receives 
millions of dollars of donations a year because of this data, and its 
accessibility. 

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[aaron shaw]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:

> Wikimedia is a nonprofit, but that doesn't mean it can't bring in money
> based on data collected from its users. I think we all know that this is
> exactly what it does.


Sorry Ed, I don't think we all know that. In fact, I'm unaware of any way
in which Wikimedia makes money based on data collected from its users. To
my knowledge, the Foundation is supported almost entirely through private
donations[1].

If there's something else you have in mind here, it would be helpful to
know what you mean. Otherwise, I think it's quite unhelpful to suggest that
the Foundation is somehow making money on the backs of users.

all the best,
Aaron


[1]
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#How_is_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_funded.3F
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Aaron Halfaker]

>
> Do you know how to get on the DERP mailing list?


It looks like inquire@derp.institute is the right place to ask.




On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:

> On Sep 3, 2014, at 7:29 PM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
>
> There were other reasons we decided to be a little more cautious about
> committing to this kind of initiative. As Toby Negrin pointed out recently: 
> There
> is one major difference between the companies involved in DERP and
> ourselves -- they all use data collected from their users to make money and
> we explicitly do not. This is frankly a point of pride for many members of
> the foundation and certainly the community.
>
>
> Wikimedia is a nonprofit, but that doesn't mean it can't bring in money
> based on data collected from its users. I think we all know that this is
> exactly what it does. As a non-profit WMF is just prevented from making a
> profit, right?
>
> More pragmatically, the last week of organizing for the DERP launch just
> happened too fast for us (and happened during Wikimania, to boot!). Those
> of us in research-y roles hadn't had a chance to discuss all the evolving
> details as a team, and on the eve of the launch we didn't all feel we had a
> 100% clear idea of what commitments we would be making by joining.
>
>
> Ok, this is much more plausible. I'm new to the idea of DERP, but based on
> what Stuart just wrote it does sound like a useful effort to be a part of.
>
>  But we're still on the DERP mailing list, and (if the review gods are
> merciful) we plan to co-organize a CSCW workshop with Tim Hwang and Max
> Goodman at CSCW 2015.
>
>
> Do you know how to get on the DERP mailing list?
>
> //Ed
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Ed Summers]

On Sep 3, 2014, at 7:29 PM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
> There were other reasons we decided to be a little more cautious about 
> committing to this kind of initiative. As Toby Negrin pointed out recently: 
> There is one major difference between the companies involved in DERP and 
> ourselves -- they all use data collected from their users to make money and 
> we explicitly do not. This is frankly a point of pride for many members of 
> the foundation and certainly the community.

Wikimedia is a nonprofit, but that doesn't mean it can't bring in money based 
on data collected from its users. I think we all know that this is exactly what 
it does. As a non-profit WMF is just prevented from making a profit, right?

> More pragmatically, the last week of organizing for the DERP launch just 
> happened too fast for us (and happened during Wikimania, to boot!). Those of 
> us in research-y roles hadn't had a chance to discuss all the evolving 
> details as a team, and on the eve of the launch we didn't all feel we had a 
> 100% clear idea of what commitments we would be making by joining. 

Ok, this is much more plausible. I'm new to the idea of DERP, but based on what 
Stuart just wrote it does sound like a useful effort to be a part of.

> But we're still on the DERP mailing list, and (if the review gods are 
> merciful) we plan to co-organize a CSCW workshop with Tim Hwang and Max 
> Goodman at CSCW 2015. 

Do you know how to get on the DERP mailing list?

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Brian Butler]

Equally important are "standards" (wrong term really) for dataset descriptions 
so they can be shared in HUMAN readable/comprehensible ways.
 
This is often the bigger problem, resulting in publishing and sharing efforts 
that don't really work.



On Sep 4, 2014, at 12:05 AM, Kerry Raymond wrote:

> Hmm, a meta data standard. there must be a few dozen on the shelf to pick 
> from ... I recall writing a few myself once :-)
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On 4 Sep 2014, at 9:53 am, "Stuart A. Yeates"  wrote:
>> 
>> What I think we really need is better standardisation of description
>> of datasets, so that they can shared in machine-readable ways. Then we
>> can have as many different groups working with different sets of
>> datasets as we like and still search, find and publish globally.
>> 
>> cheers
>> stuart
>> 
>>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Jonathan Morgan  
>>> wrote:
>>> I don't think there's cause for you to be concerned, Stu. FWIW, we've talked
>>> to Tim since launch, and after we expressed our concerns he assured us that
>>> the model of DERP is still just facilitating connections in a non-exclusive
>>> way, rather than playing a role as a reviewing body or a data broker of any
>>> kind.
>>> 
>>> There were other reasons we decided to be a little more cautious about
>>> committing to this kind of initiative. As Toby Negrin pointed out recently:
>>> There is one major difference between the companies involved in DERP and
>>> ourselves -- they all use data collected from their users to make money and
>>> we explicitly do not. This is frankly a point of pride for many members of
>>> the foundation and certainly the community.
>>> 
>>> More pragmatically, the last week of organizing for the DERP launch just
>>> happened too fast for us (and happened during Wikimania, to boot!). Those of
>>> us in research-y roles hadn't had a chance to discuss all the evolving
>>> details as a team, and on the eve of the launch we didn't all feel we had a
>>> 100% clear idea of what commitments we would be making by joining.
>>> 
>>> But we're still on the DERP mailing list, and (if the review gods are
>>> merciful) we plan to co-organize a CSCW workshop with Tim Hwang and Max
>>> Goodman at CSCW 2015.
>>> 
>>> We like DERP! Don't stop DERPing!
>>> 
>>> - Jonathan
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:31 PM, R.Stuart Geiger  wrote:
 
 Hi all, thanks for all the info. I'm a DERP fellow, which means I was
 planning on participating in this as a researcher (I'm doing some work on
 reddit, too) as well as serving as an advisory board. I apparently haven't
 been involved in the same threads/calls with the DERP organizers that 
 Aaron,
 Jonathan, and Dario have been on, and I'm kind of shocked at what I'm
 hearing. I completely believe you guys, it just runs so opposite to what
 I've been told that I'm dreading the e-mail I think I'm going to have to
 write to the DERP folks.
 
 This is the first time I've heard anything about DERP being much more than
 an informal communication broker between organizations and academic
 researchers. DERP was pitched to me as a big signaling mechanism to
 researchers, platforms, and the public that there are spaces outside of
 Facebook and Twitter to do research. Wikimedia obviously doesn't need DERP
 as much as some of the smaller platforms do, but I thought it would be 
 great
 for Wikimedia's presence (yes, the logo) to be there, standing in 
 solidarity
 with the lesser-researched platforms. As it was explained to me, all that
 was supposed to be involved in a platform joining DERP is 1) a public
 declaration that they are open to receiving requests from researchers via
 DERP and 2) a commitment to review and respond to proposals that were
 e-mailed from researchers to DERP. In one of the fellows calls, I actually
 think someone asked whether DERP would be like an Institutional Review 
 Board
 that would independently approve/reject studies, and we all thought that it
 would be better for these to be done on a case-by-case basis between the
 researcher and the platform(s).
 
 Early on, I actually suggested adding some language about ethics. I
 suggested that as we started these projects, it would be great to develop 
 an
 ongoing, informal set of best practices for doing computational social
 science in an academic/industry partnership -- particularly in the wake of
 the Facebook emotion contagion study. Something like a series of blog posts
 about the various ethical issues we encountered in the course of doing this
 kind of research across a bunch of different platforms, and ways that they
 were resolved. Perhaps that might synthesize into a mini workshop
 culminating in a whitepaper, but it wouldn't ever be binding. As I was told
 about it, DERP's direct role ends once the researcher has made suc

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Kerry Raymond]

Hmm, a meta data standard. there must be a few dozen on the shelf to pick from 
... I recall writing a few myself once :-)



Sent from my iPad

> On 4 Sep 2014, at 9:53 am, "Stuart A. Yeates"  wrote:
> 
> What I think we really need is better standardisation of description
> of datasets, so that they can shared in machine-readable ways. Then we
> can have as many different groups working with different sets of
> datasets as we like and still search, find and publish globally.
> 
> cheers
> stuart
> 
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Jonathan Morgan  
>> wrote:
>> I don't think there's cause for you to be concerned, Stu. FWIW, we've talked
>> to Tim since launch, and after we expressed our concerns he assured us that
>> the model of DERP is still just facilitating connections in a non-exclusive
>> way, rather than playing a role as a reviewing body or a data broker of any
>> kind.
>> 
>> There were other reasons we decided to be a little more cautious about
>> committing to this kind of initiative. As Toby Negrin pointed out recently:
>> There is one major difference between the companies involved in DERP and
>> ourselves -- they all use data collected from their users to make money and
>> we explicitly do not. This is frankly a point of pride for many members of
>> the foundation and certainly the community.
>> 
>> More pragmatically, the last week of organizing for the DERP launch just
>> happened too fast for us (and happened during Wikimania, to boot!). Those of
>> us in research-y roles hadn't had a chance to discuss all the evolving
>> details as a team, and on the eve of the launch we didn't all feel we had a
>> 100% clear idea of what commitments we would be making by joining.
>> 
>> But we're still on the DERP mailing list, and (if the review gods are
>> merciful) we plan to co-organize a CSCW workshop with Tim Hwang and Max
>> Goodman at CSCW 2015.
>> 
>> We like DERP! Don't stop DERPing!
>> 
>> - Jonathan
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:31 PM, R.Stuart Geiger  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi all, thanks for all the info. I'm a DERP fellow, which means I was
>>> planning on participating in this as a researcher (I'm doing some work on
>>> reddit, too) as well as serving as an advisory board. I apparently haven't
>>> been involved in the same threads/calls with the DERP organizers that Aaron,
>>> Jonathan, and Dario have been on, and I'm kind of shocked at what I'm
>>> hearing. I completely believe you guys, it just runs so opposite to what
>>> I've been told that I'm dreading the e-mail I think I'm going to have to
>>> write to the DERP folks.
>>> 
>>> This is the first time I've heard anything about DERP being much more than
>>> an informal communication broker between organizations and academic
>>> researchers. DERP was pitched to me as a big signaling mechanism to
>>> researchers, platforms, and the public that there are spaces outside of
>>> Facebook and Twitter to do research. Wikimedia obviously doesn't need DERP
>>> as much as some of the smaller platforms do, but I thought it would be great
>>> for Wikimedia's presence (yes, the logo) to be there, standing in solidarity
>>> with the lesser-researched platforms. As it was explained to me, all that
>>> was supposed to be involved in a platform joining DERP is 1) a public
>>> declaration that they are open to receiving requests from researchers via
>>> DERP and 2) a commitment to review and respond to proposals that were
>>> e-mailed from researchers to DERP. In one of the fellows calls, I actually
>>> think someone asked whether DERP would be like an Institutional Review Board
>>> that would independently approve/reject studies, and we all thought that it
>>> would be better for these to be done on a case-by-case basis between the
>>> researcher and the platform(s).
>>> 
>>> Early on, I actually suggested adding some language about ethics. I
>>> suggested that as we started these projects, it would be great to develop an
>>> ongoing, informal set of best practices for doing computational social
>>> science in an academic/industry partnership -- particularly in the wake of
>>> the Facebook emotion contagion study. Something like a series of blog posts
>>> about the various ethical issues we encountered in the course of doing this
>>> kind of research across a bunch of different platforms, and ways that they
>>> were resolved. Perhaps that might synthesize into a mini workshop
>>> culminating in a whitepaper, but it wouldn't ever be binding. As I was told
>>> about it, DERP's direct role ends once the researcher has made successful
>>> contact with the platform, aside from very high-level community organizing
>>> things like discussions about best practices. Same thing with data standards
>>> -- it is a fool's errand to mandate those, but I was told that DERP might
>>> one day be a hub where people could talk about how to integrate data from
>>> different platforms.
>>> 
>>> I did see the language that "All research supported by DERP will b

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Stuart A. Yeates]

What I think we really need is better standardisation of description
of datasets, so that they can shared in machine-readable ways. Then we
can have as many different groups working with different sets of
datasets as we like and still search, find and publish globally.

cheers
stuart

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
> I don't think there's cause for you to be concerned, Stu. FWIW, we've talked
> to Tim since launch, and after we expressed our concerns he assured us that
> the model of DERP is still just facilitating connections in a non-exclusive
> way, rather than playing a role as a reviewing body or a data broker of any
> kind.
>
> There were other reasons we decided to be a little more cautious about
> committing to this kind of initiative. As Toby Negrin pointed out recently:
> There is one major difference between the companies involved in DERP and
> ourselves -- they all use data collected from their users to make money and
> we explicitly do not. This is frankly a point of pride for many members of
> the foundation and certainly the community.
>
> More pragmatically, the last week of organizing for the DERP launch just
> happened too fast for us (and happened during Wikimania, to boot!). Those of
> us in research-y roles hadn't had a chance to discuss all the evolving
> details as a team, and on the eve of the launch we didn't all feel we had a
> 100% clear idea of what commitments we would be making by joining.
>
> But we're still on the DERP mailing list, and (if the review gods are
> merciful) we plan to co-organize a CSCW workshop with Tim Hwang and Max
> Goodman at CSCW 2015.
>
> We like DERP! Don't stop DERPing!
>
> - Jonathan
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:31 PM, R.Stuart Geiger  wrote:
>>
>> Hi all, thanks for all the info. I'm a DERP fellow, which means I was
>> planning on participating in this as a researcher (I'm doing some work on
>> reddit, too) as well as serving as an advisory board. I apparently haven't
>> been involved in the same threads/calls with the DERP organizers that Aaron,
>> Jonathan, and Dario have been on, and I'm kind of shocked at what I'm
>> hearing. I completely believe you guys, it just runs so opposite to what
>> I've been told that I'm dreading the e-mail I think I'm going to have to
>> write to the DERP folks.
>>
>> This is the first time I've heard anything about DERP being much more than
>> an informal communication broker between organizations and academic
>> researchers. DERP was pitched to me as a big signaling mechanism to
>> researchers, platforms, and the public that there are spaces outside of
>> Facebook and Twitter to do research. Wikimedia obviously doesn't need DERP
>> as much as some of the smaller platforms do, but I thought it would be great
>> for Wikimedia's presence (yes, the logo) to be there, standing in solidarity
>> with the lesser-researched platforms. As it was explained to me, all that
>> was supposed to be involved in a platform joining DERP is 1) a public
>> declaration that they are open to receiving requests from researchers via
>> DERP and 2) a commitment to review and respond to proposals that were
>> e-mailed from researchers to DERP. In one of the fellows calls, I actually
>> think someone asked whether DERP would be like an Institutional Review Board
>> that would independently approve/reject studies, and we all thought that it
>> would be better for these to be done on a case-by-case basis between the
>> researcher and the platform(s).
>>
>> Early on, I actually suggested adding some language about ethics. I
>> suggested that as we started these projects, it would be great to develop an
>> ongoing, informal set of best practices for doing computational social
>> science in an academic/industry partnership -- particularly in the wake of
>> the Facebook emotion contagion study. Something like a series of blog posts
>> about the various ethical issues we encountered in the course of doing this
>> kind of research across a bunch of different platforms, and ways that they
>> were resolved. Perhaps that might synthesize into a mini workshop
>> culminating in a whitepaper, but it wouldn't ever be binding. As I was told
>> about it, DERP's direct role ends once the researcher has made successful
>> contact with the platform, aside from very high-level community organizing
>> things like discussions about best practices. Same thing with data standards
>> -- it is a fool's errand to mandate those, but I was told that DERP might
>> one day be a hub where people could talk about how to integrate data from
>> different platforms.
>>
>> I did see the language that "All research supported by DERP will be
>> released openly and made publicly available," but I interpreted this as
>> something even weaker than Green OA -- that even if you publish in a closed
>> access journal, you have to write something up about the research. Kind of
>> like what Aaron did with our ABS paper. [1] The idea was that you should't
>> b

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[R.Stuart Geiger]

Hi all, thanks for all the info. I'm a DERP fellow, which means I was
planning on participating in this as a researcher (I'm doing some work on
reddit, too) as well as serving as an advisory board. I apparently haven't
been involved in the same threads/calls with the DERP organizers that
Aaron, Jonathan, and Dario have been on, and I'm kind of shocked at what
I'm hearing. I completely believe you guys, it just runs so opposite to
what I've been told that I'm dreading the e-mail I think I'm going to have
to write to the DERP folks.

This is the first time I've heard anything about DERP being much more than
an informal communication broker between organizations and academic
researchers. DERP was pitched to me as a big signaling mechanism to
researchers, platforms, and the public that there are spaces outside of
Facebook and Twitter to do research. Wikimedia obviously doesn't need DERP
as much as some of the smaller platforms do, but I thought it would be
great for Wikimedia's presence (yes, the logo) to be there, standing in
solidarity with the lesser-researched platforms. As it was explained to me,
all that was supposed to be involved in a platform joining DERP is 1) a
public declaration that they are open to receiving requests from
researchers via DERP and 2) a commitment to review and respond to proposals
that were e-mailed from researchers to DERP. In one of the fellows calls, I
actually think someone asked whether DERP would be like an Institutional
Review Board that would independently approve/reject studies, and we all
thought that it would be better for these to be done on a case-by-case
basis between the researcher and the platform(s).

Early on, I actually suggested adding some language about ethics. I
suggested that as we started these projects, it would be great to develop
an ongoing, informal set of best practices for doing computational social
science in an academic/industry partnership -- particularly in the wake of
the Facebook emotion contagion study. Something like a series of blog posts
about the various ethical issues we encountered in the course of doing this
kind of research across a bunch of different platforms, and ways that they
were resolved. Perhaps that might synthesize into a mini workshop
culminating in a whitepaper, but it wouldn't ever be binding. As I was told
about it, DERP's direct role ends once the researcher has made successful
contact with the platform, aside from very high-level community organizing
things like discussions about best practices. Same thing with data
standards -- it is a fool's errand to mandate those, but I was told that
DERP might one day be a hub where people could talk about how to integrate
data from different platforms.

I did see the language that "All research supported by DERP will be
released openly and made publicly available," but I interpreted this as
something even weaker than Green OA -- that even if you publish in a closed
access journal, you have to write something up about the research. Kind of
like what Aaron did with our ABS paper. [1] The idea was that you should't
be able to do studies in the dark without anybody ever knowing about them.
The fellows were told that this wouldn't apply to datasets at all. And
given how many qualitative researchers are fellows and planning on doing
interviews, the concern that we would have to release full interview
transcripts was specifically brought up. Again, the idea was that DERP
might later develop some optional, guiding best practices to make things
easier, but any conditions of data access were supposed to be negotiated
between the researcher and the platform. I remember asking if DERP was
supposed to be some kind of central repository for storing data, and that
was resoundingly rejected.

So if DERP has shifted beyond this, that would be a pretty serious matter
of concern for me.

Best,
Stuart


[1] http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Joe Corneli  wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 10:14 PM, Kerry Raymond 
> wrote:
>
> > It would seem that DERP needs to permit at least two levels of
> > participation, one of which allows information to be provided about data
> set
> > availability but retains separate control on access.
>
> ... To boldly go where GIT has gone before.
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Kerry Raymond]

I think many organisations would be reluctant to sign up to DERP on that basis. 
It seems somewhat ironic that a group apparently committed to ethical research 
seems not to have considered that existing data sets may have been collected 
under strict conditions of use and re-use as part of existing ethical processes.

It would seem that DERP needs to permit at least two levels of participation, 
one of which allows information to be provided about data set availability but 
retains separate control on access. Presumably it would easier for WMF to sign 
up for this lower level of engagement. 

Sent from my iPad

> On 4 Sep 2014, at 6:46 am, Dario Taraborelli  
> wrote:
> 
> Ed, SJ,
> 
> on top of what Aaron and Jonathan said (for example, the use of WMF’s logo) 
> there were other concerns that we had to address.
> 
> The scope of DERP shifted from an informal communication broker between 
> organizations and academic researchers to a body that – at least according to 
> the original press release – would be responsible for: 
> 
> • setting guidelines for ethical research (for example, by prohibiting any 
> kind of feature testing/experimentation)
> • aggregating and sharing privacy sensitive data
> • reviewing data requests
> 
> on behalf of the member organizations.
> 
> The Foundation has specific policies on what data can be collected from 
> readers and contributors, how long this data is retained, how it’s released 
> and licensed and under what conditions third parties can obtain access to 
> private data hosted by the Foundation. We felt that we could not join an 
> initiative that would commit the organization to make promises about data 
> access to external parties, without having a conversation with our internal 
> stakeholders first–not just WMF Legal or the WMF analytics team but also our 
> volunteer community, chapters etc. 
> 
> The press release was later amended to remove language that would suggest 
> specific commitments for member organizations but our concerns remain the 
> same. 
> 
> Jonathan, Aaron and I are all interested in creating opportunities for 
> cross-platform research on online collaboration and we have plans in the 
> pipeline to make more data publicly available. We are big fans of DERP and 
> are still involved in a personal capacity in the initiative, but we are not 
> in a position to take Wikimedia with us at this time.
> 
> I hope that clarifies how the decision was made.
> 
> Dario
> 
>> On Sep 3, 2014, at 1:03 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:
 On Sep 3, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
 Sigh. Yes. We were early adopters of DERP. Then we had to pull out. But it 
 might still happen someday. It's complicated :/
>>> 
>>> If you can share why it's complicated I'd love to hear ; I suspect it's 
>>> political, but oftentimes these politics have research implications.
>> 
>> Ditto.
>> 
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Dario Taraborelli]

Ed, SJ,

on top of what Aaron and Jonathan said (for example, the use of WMF’s logo) 
there were other concerns that we had to address.

The scope of DERP shifted from an informal communication broker between 
organizations and academic researchers to a body that – at least according to 
the original press release – would be responsible for: 

• setting guidelines for ethical research (for example, by prohibiting any kind 
of feature testing/experimentation)
• aggregating and sharing privacy sensitive data
• reviewing data requests

on behalf of the member organizations.

The Foundation has specific policies on what data can be collected from readers 
and contributors, how long this data is retained, how it’s released and 
licensed and under what conditions third parties can obtain access to private 
data hosted by the Foundation. We felt that we could not join an initiative 
that would commit the organization to make promises about data access to 
external parties, without having a conversation with our internal stakeholders 
first–not just WMF Legal or the WMF analytics team but also our volunteer 
community, chapters etc. 

The press release was later amended to remove language that would suggest 
specific commitments for member organizations but our concerns remain the same. 

Jonathan, Aaron and I are all interested in creating opportunities for 
cross-platform research on online collaboration and we have plans in the 
pipeline to make more data publicly available. We are big fans of DERP and are 
still involved in a personal capacity in the initiative, but we are not in a 
position to take Wikimedia with us at this time.

I hope that clarifies how the decision was made.

Dario

On Sep 3, 2014, at 1:03 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:
>> On Sep 3, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
>>> Sigh. Yes. We were early adopters of DERP. Then we had to pull out. But it 
>>> might still happen someday. It's complicated :/
>> 
>> If you can share why it's complicated I'd love to hear ; I suspect it's 
>> political, but oftentimes these politics have research implications.
> 
> Ditto.
> 
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Samuel Klein]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Ed Summers  wrote:
> On Sep 3, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Jonathan Morgan  wrote:
>> Sigh. Yes. We were early adopters of DERP. Then we had to pull out. But it 
>> might still happen someday. It's complicated :/
>
> If you can share why it's complicated I'd love to hear ; I suspect it's 
> political, but oftentimes these politics have research implications.

Ditto.

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Jonathan Morgan]

Sigh. Yes. We were early adopters of DERP. Then we had to pull out. But it
might still happen someday. It's complicated :/


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Aaron Halfaker 
wrote:

> When I started working with DERP, it was just a mailing list.  When DERP
> became something bigger (press release with logos == the WMF Comm Team's
> concerns), it needed wider consultation within the WMF.  For better or
> worse, it does not seem like that is a priority right now.
>
> For all intents and purposes, we have our own DERP right here.  We have a
> public mailing list.  We support volunteer & external researchers access to
> data (and we're actively working to make that easier[1]).   We hold regular
> outreach events (like the Research Hackathon @ Wikimania).  We're also
> organizing outreach events with other open ecosystem online communities.
>  For example, we have CSCW'15 workshop proposal submitted, and assuming it
> is accepted, we'll have participants from Imgur, Reddit and Zooniverse.
>
> 1. quarry.wmflabs.org
>
> -Aaron
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Ed Summers  wrote:
>
>> On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:36 AM, Aaron Halfaker 
>> wrote:
>> > Indeed.  Jonathan, Dario and I have been in contact with Tim Hwang and
>> the other DERP organizers for months.  We're a big fan of the project and
>> we're on the DERP mailing list.  Regretfully, there was some confusion
>> around the time that DERP was going to "go live" that required us to back
>> out (e.g. use of the WMF logo needed to be authorized).
>>
>> Is the DERP mailing list public yet?
>>
>> //Ed
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>
>
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>


-- 
Jonathan T. Morgan
Learning Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) 
jmor...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Aaron Halfaker]

When I started working with DERP, it was just a mailing list.  When DERP
became something bigger (press release with logos == the WMF Comm Team's
concerns), it needed wider consultation within the WMF.  For better or
worse, it does not seem like that is a priority right now.

For all intents and purposes, we have our own DERP right here.  We have a
public mailing list.  We support volunteer & external researchers access to
data (and we're actively working to make that easier[1]).   We hold regular
outreach events (like the Research Hackathon @ Wikimania).  We're also
organizing outreach events with other open ecosystem online communities.
 For example, we have CSCW'15 workshop proposal submitted, and assuming it
is accepted, we'll have participants from Imgur, Reddit and Zooniverse.

1. quarry.wmflabs.org

-Aaron


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Ed Summers  wrote:

> On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:36 AM, Aaron Halfaker 
> wrote:
> > Indeed.  Jonathan, Dario and I have been in contact with Tim Hwang and
> the other DERP organizers for months.  We're a big fan of the project and
> we're on the DERP mailing list.  Regretfully, there was some confusion
> around the time that DERP was going to "go live" that required us to back
> out (e.g. use of the WMF logo needed to be authorized).
>
> Is the DERP mailing list public yet?
>
> //Ed
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Ed Summers]

On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:36 AM, Aaron Halfaker  wrote:
> Indeed.  Jonathan, Dario and I have been in contact with Tim Hwang and the 
> other DERP organizers for months.  We're a big fan of the project and we're 
> on the DERP mailing list.  Regretfully, there was some confusion around the 
> time that DERP was going to "go live" that required us to back out (e.g. use 
> of the WMF logo needed to be authorized).

Is the DERP mailing list public yet?

//Ed
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Jodi Schneider]

So does that mean that it's on the agenda for whichever group approves use
of the WMF logo?


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Aaron Halfaker 
wrote:

> Indeed.  Jonathan, Dario and I have been in contact with Tim Hwang and the
> other DERP organizers for months.  We're a big fan of the project and we're
> on the DERP mailing list.  Regretfully, there was some confusion around the
> time that DERP was going to "go live" that required us to back out (e.g.
> use of the WMF logo needed to be authorized).
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
>> Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.
>>
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html
>>
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>>
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Aaron Halfaker]

Indeed.  Jonathan, Dario and I have been in contact with Tim Hwang and the
other DERP organizers for months.  We're a big fan of the project and we're
on the DERP mailing list.  Regretfully, there was some confusion around the
time that DERP was going to "go live" that required us to back out (e.g.
use of the WMF logo needed to be authorized).


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.
>
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html
>
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[Wiki-research-l] Joining derp?

[Samuel Klein]

Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.

http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html
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