[Wiki-research-l] Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Re: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year - Call for Nominations

[Leila Zia]

Hi Galder,

Please see below.

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 12:26 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
 wrote:
>
> Thanks, Leila, for answering the question raised.

Anytime.

> I'm a bit confused with this, I supposed that the Wikimedia Foundation 
> Research Award was an initiative from the Research team of the WMF 
> (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research), but I read in your 
> answer that "WikiResearch is primarily in English and about research 
> published in English". I understand that the main working language of the WMF 
> is English, as this mailing list is, but I would assume that an Award 
> promoted by the WMF should be multilingual.

Sorry. Let me clarify. What I was referring to when I used
WikiResearch in my email was the WikiResearch twitter account:
https://twitter.com/WikiResearch . I did not intend to refer to the
WMF Research team or Wikimedia Research community. And to repeat: this
is one source we use to find research done on the Wikimedia projects.
There are other sources as I mentioned in my response.

> Me, as a Basque Wikimedians User Group member, I promote Wikimedia activities 
> in Basque language, because that is our goal. But the WMF is not the English 
> Wikimedians User Group, as far as I understand. Our designated lingua franca 
> may be English, but the WMF can't exclude research that is not made in this 
> language from an Award. I would understand if the (non-existing) English 
> Wikimedians User Group created the "EWUG Research in English Award of the 
> Year", but is not the case.

I understand and acknowledge your point about inclusion. I hope some
of the points I shared about our existing process in my other email
can help you find possible solutions we can consider doing. :) On my
end: I have a todo to come back to you all.

Best,
Leila

> Cheers,
>
> Galder
>
> 
> From: Leila Zia 
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2022 8:04 PM
> To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
> Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List ; Discussion list 
> for the Wikidata project. 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: [Wiki-research-l] Re: The Wikimedia Foundation 
> Research Award of the Year - Call for Nominations
>
> Hi all, Thank you for your feedback. I take your comments as a sign of
> genuine care and I'm happy to engage and learn with you how we can do
> better. (Note: I'm responding to all lists, though some of the
> feedback has been sent only to wikimedia-l.)
>
> * Galder, Gereon, Xavier, Gnangarra, and Andy: thank you for your feedback.
>
> * Andy, I'll respond to your comment first. We do not require the work
> to be published under a free license for us to consider it for the
> award. However, if the work is shortlisted, we reach out to the
> authors, tell them that it's shortlisted, and it can be considered for
> the award if the work is at least made publicly available. At that
> point, we also encourage the authors to publish under a free license
> and share with them a few ways they may be able to (even if the work
> is published somewhere already with restrictions). The issue of
> licenses is on top of our mind and we actively look for ways to push
> for more Wikimedia research work to be published under free licenses.
>
> * I am going to share with you some of my thoughts, and a possible
> improvement we can make in the process.
>
> ** Let's try to keep things simple to be able to improve things
> together. This is not a case of "WMF did x". The idea of the award was
> created in the Research team, and both last year and this year, we've
> been grateful to have the support of researchers outside of WMF for
> it. (Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University), and Benjamin Mako Hill (U.
> of Washington)). I take full responsibility for the execution of the
> award and I can take your feedback and see where we can improve the
> process. :)
>
> ** In order to be able to improve the process, I should share more
> details about how we do the search for the publications first. We have
> multiple sources for searching for research published in a given year:
> 1. The nomination process we shared on this thread.
> 2. Research publications shared in WikiResearch twitter account.
> 3. External research search engines and repositories for different
> fields: we use scholar.google.com, dblp.org and more.
>
> To give you a sense of the distribution of scholarly publications we
> identified last year from each of the above sources: 11 nominations
> and 170+ research publications through the twitter account and
> external searches. The award chairs (2 people; this year it is going
> to be Mako and I) reviewed all identified publications. We discussed
> every publication at varying depth depending on the result of our
> initial reviews.
>
> ** Knowing the process, there are at least a few ways I think the
> process must be improved. I'm sure now that you see more you can
> critique even more. :) I proactively share with you some of them here:
> ::* I need to have an easychair account to 

[Wiki-research-l] Re: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year - Call for Nominations

[Leila Zia]

Hi all, Thank you for your feedback. I take your comments as a sign of
genuine care and I'm happy to engage and learn with you how we can do
better. (Note: I'm responding to all lists, though some of the
feedback has been sent only to wikimedia-l.)

* Galder, Gereon, Xavier, Gnangarra, and Andy: thank you for your feedback.

* Andy, I'll respond to your comment first. We do not require the work
to be published under a free license for us to consider it for the
award. However, if the work is shortlisted, we reach out to the
authors, tell them that it's shortlisted, and it can be considered for
the award if the work is at least made publicly available. At that
point, we also encourage the authors to publish under a free license
and share with them a few ways they may be able to (even if the work
is published somewhere already with restrictions). The issue of
licenses is on top of our mind and we actively look for ways to push
for more Wikimedia research work to be published under free licenses.

* I am going to share with you some of my thoughts, and a possible
improvement we can make in the process.

** Let's try to keep things simple to be able to improve things
together. This is not a case of "WMF did x". The idea of the award was
created in the Research team, and both last year and this year, we've
been grateful to have the support of researchers outside of WMF for
it. (Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University), and Benjamin Mako Hill (U.
of Washington)). I take full responsibility for the execution of the
award and I can take your feedback and see where we can improve the
process. :)

** In order to be able to improve the process, I should share more
details about how we do the search for the publications first. We have
multiple sources for searching for research published in a given year:
1. The nomination process we shared on this thread.
2. Research publications shared in WikiResearch twitter account.
3. External research search engines and repositories for different
fields: we use scholar.google.com, dblp.org and more.

To give you a sense of the distribution of scholarly publications we
identified last year from each of the above sources: 11 nominations
and 170+ research publications through the twitter account and
external searches. The award chairs (2 people; this year it is going
to be Mako and I) reviewed all identified publications. We discussed
every publication at varying depth depending on the result of our
initial reviews.

** Knowing the process, there are at least a few ways I think the
process must be improved. I'm sure now that you see more you can
critique even more. :) I proactively share with you some of them here:
::* I need to have an easychair account to nominate. That can/must
change (but to what? we want these nominations to be private, and we
need a way to be able to process them efficiently because we're only 2
people. We are considering openreview.net for the future years because
they're open source; but they still have other limitations. For this
year, easychair it is.).
::* We need more people on the committee: both for workload sharing,
and also including more perspectives. (This is /a lot/ to ask of
researchers. I'm grateful that Mako and Aaron have supported us in the
past.)
::* We need other non-English sources to source community research.
(WikiResearch is primarily in English and about research published in
English.)
::* The shared language of reviewers is assumed to be English. If we
are going to at scale consider other languages, then we need a way
that this group of people can converse on academic topics with one
another without having to share a language.

** I also understand the reality of the resources available to me and
our team. I understand the importance of working on multiple fronts
with regards to the research community (Wikimedia Research Funds, Wiki
Workshop, global research competitions, research showcases, monthly
office hours, talks and presentations, formal collaborations, and
more). I believe in the importance of motivation (and we have seen a
very good momentum around the award idea from last year's run). We
need to do many things, with very limited resources; Our values and
ideals are important and we have to attempt to hold them all as we
make decisions. In practice, sometimes we can't meet all the ambitions
we have. We need to make trade-offs. What is important is to be aware,
to listen, to try to improve, and to be honest.

I will leave you with the above and I commit to talk with Mako to
consider ways to open up the process for more languages to be included
(in 2021 or in 2022+; I can't promise changes for the 2021 process.).
One of us will write back here with what we decide to do.

Thanks,
Leila

On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 5:42 AM Andy Mabbett  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2022 at 19:48, Leila Zia  wrote:
>
> > =Eligibility criteria=
>
> > * The publication must be available in English.
>
> I echo others' concerns about this.
>
> I'm equally 

[Wiki-research-l] Invitation to Wikimedia Research Office Hours January 11, 2022

[Emily Lescak]

Hi all,


Join the Research Team at the Wikimedia Foundation [1] for their monthly
Office hours this Tuesday, 2022-01-11, at 12:00-13:00 UTC (4:00 PT / 7:00
ET / 13:00 CET). View your local time here
. Please note the time change!
We are experimenting with our Office hours schedules to make our sessions
more globally welcoming.

To participate, join the video-call via this link [2]. There is no set
agenda - feel free to add your item to the list of topics in the etherpad
[3]. You are welcome to add questions / items to the etherpad in advance,
or when you arrive at the session. Even if you are unable to attend the
session, you can leave a question that we can address asynchronously. If
you do not have a specific agenda item, you are welcome to hang out and
enjoy the conversation. More detailed information (e.g. about how to
attend) can be found here [4].

Through these office hours, we aim to make ourselves more available to
answer research related questions that you as Wikimedia volunteer editors,
organizers, affiliates, staff, and researchers face in your projects and
initiatives. Here are some example cases we hope to be able to support you
with:

   -

   You have a specific research related question that you suspect you
   should be able to answer with the publicly available data and you don’t
   know how to find an answer for it, or you just need some more help with it.
   For example, how can I compute the ratio of anonymous to registered editors
   in my wiki?
   -

   You run into repetitive or very manual work as part of your Wikimedia
   contributions and you wish to find out if there are ways to use machines to
   improve your workflows. These types of conversations can sometimes be
   harder to find an answer for during an office hour. However, discussing
   them can help us understand your challenges better and we may find ways to
   work with each other to support you in addressing it in the future.
   -

   You want to learn what the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation
   does and how we can potentially support you. Specifically for affiliates:
   if you are interested in building relationships with the academic
   institutions in your country, we would love to talk with you and learn
   more. We have a series of programs that aim to expand the network of
   Wikimedia researchers globally and we would love to collaborate with those
   of you interested more closely in this space.
   -

   You want to talk with us about one of our existing programs [5].


Hope to see many of you,
Emily on behalf of the WMF Research Team

[1] https://research.wikimedia.org

[2] https://meet.jit.si/WMF-Research-Office-Hours

[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Research-Analytics-Office-hours

[4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours

[5] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html



-- 
Emily Lescak (she / her)
Senior Research Community Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation
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