Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys

[Kerry Raymond]

30? No wonder we are worried about editor attrition :-) Seriously,

 

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryEN.htm

 

shows that in May 2014 on en.WP we had about 32K active editors (> 5 edits
per month) and 3K very active editors (>100 edits per month). 

 

Or have I missed something here? Are researchers only interested in people
who have been on Wikipedia for 10+ years with 10M edits or .?

 

Kerry

 

  _  

From: wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lane
Rasberry
Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2014 12:00 PM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys

 

Hey guys,

I posted some thoughts to my own blog and am linking to those posts below.
Everything I say on my blog is captured in the summary below, so feel free
to not click through.



My biggest worry is that researchers who recruit human subjects assume that
there are huge numbers of Wikipedians for them to survey, and consequently,
they do not need to do a lot of advance survey preparation because there is
no harm from distracting Wikipedians from their usual volunteer work. This
assumption is wrong because actually almost every researcher recruiting
human subjects wants Wikipedians who are in very short supply. Consequently,
researchers do cause harm to the community by soliciting for volunteer time,
and Wikipedia community benefit is dubious when researchers do not do
sufficient preparation for their work. This is not quite accurate, but if
there were one message I could convey to researchers, it would be "Your
research participant pool only consists of about 30 super busy people and
many other volunteers greatly depend on getting their time. When you take
time from a Wikipedian, you are taking that time away from other volunteers
who really need it, so be respectful of your intervention in our
communities."


 

I do not want a lot of gatekeeping between researchers and the Wikipedia
community, but at the same time, researchers should take professional pride
in their work and take care not to disrupt Wikimedia community activities.





I am still thinking about what should be done with research.

yours,

 

 

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Dario Taraborelli
 wrote:

Hi all,

 

I am a bit late in the game, but since so many questions were raised about
RCom, its scope, its goals, the source of its authority etc. and I helped
coordinate it in the early days I thought I'd chime in to clear some
confusion. 

 

Is RCom an official WMF body or a group of volunteers?

 

RCom was created as a volunteer body to help design policies and best
practices around research on Wikimedia projects. People who joined the
committee did so on a volunteer basis and with a variety of interests by
responding to a call for participation issued by WMF. Despite the fact that
the original initiative came from WMF, its membership almost entirely
consisted of non-WMF researchers and community members (those of us who are
now with Wikimedia had no affiliation with the Foundation when RCom was
launched [1]). RCom work was and remains 100% volunteer-driven, even for
those of us who are full-time employees of the Foundation.

 

Is RCom a body regulating subject recruitment?

 

No, subject recruitment was only one among many areas of interest identified
by its participants [2]

 

Is RCom still alive?

 

RCom stopped working a while ago as a group meeting on a regular basis to
discuss joint initiatives. However, it spawned a large number of initiatives
and workgroups that are still alive and kicking, some of which have evolved
into other projects that are now only loosely associated with RCom. These
include reviewing subject recruitment requests, but also the Research
Newsletter, which has been published monthly for the last 3 years; countless
initiatives in the area of open access; initiatives to facilitate Wikimedia
data documentation and data discoverability; hackathons and outreach events
aimed at bringing together researchers and Wikimedia contributors. Subject
recruitment reviews and discussions are still happening, and I believe they
provide a valuable service when you consider that they are entirely run by a
microscopic number of volunteers. I don't think that the alternative between
"either RCom exists and it functions effectively or reviews should
immediately stop" is well framed or even desirable, for the reasons that I
explain below. 

 

What's the source of RCom's authority in reviewing subject recruitment
requests?

 

Despite the perception that one of RCom's duties would be to provide formal
approval for research projects, it was never designed to do so and it never
had the power to enforce formal review decisions. Instead, it w

[Wiki-research-l] Wikimedia Brazilian Group of Education and Research

[Rodrigo Padula]

Hello my friends,

Aiming the continuity of the education program in Brazil and more
participation of the Brazilian academy, I am proposing the creation and
recognition of a new user group with special focus on Education and
Research.

I would like to work closer to the international Wikimedia movement,
planning and executing activities with foreign universities and chapters.

Here is the proposal
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Brazilian_Group_of_Education_and_Research/User_Group_Proposal

We are collecting endorsements and confirming some partnership while AffCom
is evaluating the proposal.

Best regards!

Rodrigo Padula
Education Program Coordinator - Brasil
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys

[Heather Ford]

That is indeed really helpful, thanks for taking the time, Dario!

Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute  Doctoral Programme
EthnographyMatters  | Oxford Digital
Ethnography Group 
http://hblog.org | @hfordsa 




On 29 July 2014 23:00, Dario Taraborelli  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am a bit late in the game, but since so many questions were raised about
> RCom, its scope, its goals, the source of its authority etc. and I helped
> coordinate it in the early days I thought I’d chime in to clear some
> confusion.
>
> *Is RCom an official WMF body or a group of volunteers?*
>
> RCom was created as a volunteer body to help design policies and best
> practices around research on Wikimedia projects. People who joined the
> committee did so on a volunteer basis and with a variety of interests by
> responding to a call for participation issued by WMF. Despite the fact that
> the original initiative came from WMF, its membership almost entirely
> consisted of non-WMF researchers and community members (those of us who are
> now with Wikimedia had no affiliation with the Foundation when RCom was
> launched [1]). RCom work was and remains 100% volunteer-driven, even for
> those of us who are full-time employees of the Foundation.
>
> *Is RCom a body regulating subject recruitment?*
>
> No, subject recruitment was only one among many areas of interest
> identified by its participants [2]
>
> *Is RCom still alive?*
>
> RCom stopped working a while ago* as a* *group meeting on a regular basis
> to discuss joint initiatives*. However, it spawned a large number of
> initiatives and workgroups that are still alive and kicking, some of which
> have evolved into other projects that are now only loosely associated with
> RCom. These include reviewing subject recruitment requests, but also the
> Research Newsletter, which has been published monthly for the last 3 years;
> countless initiatives in the area of open access; initiatives to facilitate
> Wikimedia data documentation and data discoverability; hackathons and
> outreach events aimed at bringing together researchers and Wikimedia
> contributors. Subject recruitment reviews and discussions are still
> happening, and I believe they provide a valuable service when you consider
> that they are entirely run by a microscopic number of volunteers. I don’t
> think that the alternative between “either RCom exists and it functions
> effectively or reviews should immediately stop” is well framed or even
> desirable, for the reasons that I explain below.
>
> *What’s the source of RCom’s authority in reviewing subject recruitment
> requests?*
>
> Despite the perception that one of RCom’s duties would be to provide
> formal approval for research projects, it was never designed to do so and
> it never had the power to enforce formal review decisions. Instead, it was
> offered as a volunteer support service in an effort to help minimize
> disruption, improve the relevance of research involving Wikimedia
> contributors, sanity check the credentials of the researchers, create
> collaborations between researchers working on the same topic. The lack of
> community or WMF policies to back subject recruitment caused in the past
> few years quite some headaches, particularly in those cases in which
> recruitment attempts were blocked and referred to the RCom in order to
> “obtain formal approval”. The review process itself was meant to be as
> inclusive as possible and not restricted to RCom participants and
> researchers having their proposal reviewed were explicitly invited to
> address any questions or concerns raised by community members on the talk
> page. I totally agree that the way in which the project templates and forms
> were designed needs some serious overhaul to remove any indication of a
> binding review process or a commitment for reviews to be delivered within a
> fixed time frame. I cannot think of any example in which the review process
> discriminated some type of projects (say qualitative research) in favor of
> other types of research, but I am sure different research proposals
> attracted different levels of participation and interest in the review
> process. My recommendation to anyone interested in designing future subject
> recruitment processes is to focus on a lightweight review process open to
> the largest possible number of community members but backed by transparent
> and *enforceable* policies. It’s a really hard problem and there is
> simply no obvious silver bullet solution that can be found without some
> experimentation and fault tolerance.
>
> *What about requests for **private data**?*
>
> Private data and technical support requests from WMF are a different
> story: they were folded into the list of frequently asked questions hosted
> on the RCom section of Meta, but by definition they require a direct and
> substantial i

Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys

[Piotr Konieczny]

"We regularly see requests to survey the most active Wikipedians about 
their motivations to edit."


As I am in the top 100 most active Wikipedians, unless I am an outlier 
for some reason, very few of those projects come to fruition, as I get 
no more than 1-2 requests a year, at most.


"See this proposal[1] for an example of a study that was halted in 
review due to the disruption it would have caused."


So, they would ask 500 people to take part in a 10 minute survey. A bit 
long, but... so  what? I expect they'd get a response ratio of about 
10%, so they should contact the Top 5000. Still not seeing a problem. 
Those who don't want, don't take part in the survey. It would be nice if 
the researchers promised to do something constructive like improve 
Wikipedia content, give out random prizes to contributors, or such to 
"give back" to the community. Perhaps an idea to add to best practices, 
but... where's that disruption? What am I missing?


--

Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus

On 7/19/2014 02:59, Aaron Halfaker wrote:


Does anyone know whether this is actually a problem with editors
these days?


Yes.  We regularly see requests to survey the most active Wikipedians 
about their motivations to edit.  These requests are problematic for 
some very obvious reasons.  See this proposal[1] for an example of a 
study that was halted in review due to the disruption it would have 
caused.


The projects I do as a qualitative researcher tend to be
exploratory. I will interview people on skype, for example, about
their work on particular articles before I know that I have a project.

Do you document your study on wiki and ask for feedback about 
disruption before moving forward?  Regardless of the process around 
it, I think we might all agree that is good behavior for any research 
activity.  This might be obvious to you as someone who has been doing 
ethnographic work in Wikimedia communities for a long time, but it is 
apprently less obvious to more junior wiki researchers.


This good-faith documentation and discussion describes the whole RCom 
subject recruitment process.  You refer to RCom as "heavy weight", but 
as far as I can tell, the weight is entirely on the RCom coordinator 
-- a burden I'll gladly accept to help good research take place 
without disruption.  Researchers should have already documented their 
research and prepared themselves to discuss the work with their 
subjects before they arrive.


I don't know of a single study that has passed stalled in RCom's 
process that has resulted in substantial disruption or stalled for 
more than two weeks.  I welcome you to provide counter examples.


I don't think [the CSCW workshop proposal] addresses the issue
unless there's something I'm missing (like an invitation, for example!


One of the ways that researchers can be supported is through groups 
that help them socialize their research activities with community 
members (and minimize disruption for community members).  Despite the 
tone of this conversation, we have been highly successful in this regard.


I think it would be nice if you could offer an invitation to the
researchers on this list


That's the plan.  We're just getting to a point where we have a solid 
idea of what we want to accomplish.  An announcement will come soon.


Basically, I think that we need to reassess what kinds of problems
are the most important ones right now that we want to solve rather
than resuscitating a process that was designed to address a
specific type of problem that was prevalent a long time ago


As I pointed out previously, the subject recruitment process is alive 
and does not need to be "resuscitated ".  It is also solving a 
relevant problem.  I welcome Lane Rasberry (if he has time) to share 
his substantial concerns about undocumented, undiscussed research 
taking place on-wiki.


1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_knowledge_sharing
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncategorized_support_requests

-Aaron


On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Heather Ford > wrote:


On 17 July 2014 22:37, Jonathan Morgan mailto:jmor...@wikimedia.org>> 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
mailto:hfor...@gmail.com>> 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
   

[Wiki-research-l] Invitation: Research Hackathon on August 6 and 7

[Pine W]

The Wikimedia Research Hackathon on August 6 and 7 takes place parallel to
the general Wikimania Hackathon in London.

Wikimania Hackathon information is available at
https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon

Research Hackathon information is available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2/Hackathons/August_6-7th,_2014

>From the Research Hackathon info page: this "is an opportunity for anyone
interested in research on wikis, Wikipedia, and other open collaborations
to meet, share ideas, and work together. It's being organized by
researchers in academia and the Wikimedia Foundation, but we want anyone
interested in research to participate. Whether or not you consider yourself
a researcher, or would ever want to be one, come with questions, answers,
data, code, crazy ideas... or just your insatiable curiosity."

Local participation will occur at Wikimania London and in Philadelphia, PA,
US. Remote participation is possible and will include researchers and
community members globally.

Please see the Research Hackathon information page for scheduling and
sign-up details.

Further questions may be directed to Aaron Halfaker (ahalfa...@wikimedia.org)
or Leila Zia (le...@wikimedia.org).*

Pine

*A $1 fine will be imposed by Oliver Keyes on anyone who misspells Leila's
name or misdirects emails to the WMF Executive Director.
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