[Wiki-research-l] Re: Best practices for researchers soliciting off-wiki interviews

[Su-Laine Brodsky]

Hi Jodi,

In terms of etiquette, it’s totally fine to post these kinds of interview 
requests on WikiProject Talk pages.  I’d expect though that the people who read 
WikiProject talk pages are skewed towards more highly-engaged participants. 
Their habits for assessing scientific and technical information may not be 
representative of Wikipedia contributors overall in the topic area. 

As a frequent contributor to climate change articles, I’ll also mention that if 
you want to know how Wikipedia contributors assess information about climate 
change, I suspect you’ll get different answers if you ask at WikiProject 
Climate Change than if you ask at WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. 

Cheers,
Su-Laine (Wikipedia volunteer)


> On Jan 12, 2023, at 12:34 PM, Isaac Johnson  wrote:
> 
> Hey Jodi -- thanks for asking the question. Some of my thoughts about how
> researchers can solicit off-wiki interviews:
> 
>   - If you have not already created one, I suggest creating a project page
>   on Meta  and linking
>   to it in any posts. This gives interested editors a single page on wiki
>   where they can find relevant information on the project if they're curious.
>   The benefit of Meta in particular is that it also provides a consistent
>   format, has privacy/transparency guarantees, has a place for discussion
>   (talk page), and is discoverable by other researchers.
>   - If the research is extractive in some way (i.e. not just passive data
>   analysis but asking for editor's time as with interviews), you want to make
>   sure it also provides clear benefits for those Wikimedian
>   individuals/communities. When soliciting interviews, it isq quite helpful
>   to communicate these benefits to editors so they can judge whether it's
>   worthwhile to participate.
>   - Your inclination to post on talk pages for topic-specific WikiProjects
>   (collaborative spaces) is spot on. This helps a lot with reducing
>   interview-request spam for editors and if your research leads to actionable
>   findings / tools, then you have a community of folks who know the project
>   and you can hopefully work with to disseminate.
>   - Start small (maybe posting to one group to begin with). This wll help
>   you gather feedback -- e.g., address questions/concerns from editors --
>   before posting in more places.
>   - Also consider looking for local events to attend -- e.g., an
>   edit-a-thon or Wikimedian conference
>   . This is a great way to find
>   editors for interviews in more relaxed spaces and potentially get to
>   observe and ask questions about their editing processes first-hand. For
>   instance, I saw you're at UIUC: maybe the Wikimedians of Chicago User
>   Group
>   
> 
>   has events that could be attended? Sometimes there are nearby
>   Wikimedians-in-Residence
>   
> 
>   who could potentially help you connect with local communities as well.
> 
> Hope that helps and curious to hear thoughts from others.
> 
> Best,
> Isaac
> 
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 5:42 PM Jodi Schneider  wrote:
> 
>> Hi wiki-research-l folks,
>> 
>> Can the list point me in the right direction about how researchers should
>> solicit off-wiki interviews? I'm seeking to interview editors of English
>> Wikipedia who have provided information about scientific and technical
>> topics. I'm struggling to find up-to-date documentation about expectations
>> for researchers...
>> 
>> Currently the focus is COVID-19; in future years the focus will shift to
>> climate change; and AI and labor. Overall the project seeks to understand
>> how knowledge brokers (including Wikipedia editors) assess the quality of
>> technical and scientific information. This is part of my 3-year, US-based,
>> IRB-approved research study:
>> https://infoqualitylab.org/projects/knowledgebrokers/participate-y1
>> 
>> My inclination (in the absence of specific best practice directions) would
>> be to post a message the Talk pages of the most obvious WikiProjects, with
>> information about the project and how to reach me:
>> WikiProject COVID-19
>> WikiProject Medicine / Pulmonology
>> WikiProject Viruses
>> WikiProject Disaster management
>> Is that appropriate? I'd welcome a pointer to specific requirements or best
>> practices. Offline advice also welcome!
>> 
>> -Jodi
>> User:Jodi.a.schneider
>> jschnei...@pobox.com
>> https://jodischneider.com/jodi.html
>> ___
>> Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Senior Research Scientist -- Wikimedia
> Foundation
> ___
> Wiki-research-l 

[Wiki-research-l] Re: Request for input on dataset releases

[Emily Lescak]

Hi all,

Thanks to those of you who responded to the data release survey we released
in October. The WMF Security team has developed a prioritization plan for
releasing data in the coming year:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy/Proposed/DP_dataset_release_prioritization.
We invite you to leave questions or comments on the talk page.

Warm regards,

Emily Lescak, WMF Research team

Hal Triedman, WMF Security team


On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 2:50 PM Emily Lescak  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> As part of our efforts to better serve the Wikimedia research community,
> we are happy to share that we are collaborating with the Security team at
> WMF to help prioritize the release of data that can be useful for your
> research. The Security team is working to make more datasets privatized
> and public to avoid the need for non-disclosure agreements. You can learn
> more here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy.
>
> Over the next 12 months, the Security team plans to release 5 datasets:
>
>-
>
>country-language-pageview ongoing (end of 2022)
>-
>
>country-language-pageview historical (March 2023)
>-
>
>geo-aggregated grants data back to 2009 (Feb 2023)
>-
>
>geoeditors monthly (June 2023)
>-
>
>dataset informed by research community priorities identified in this
>survey (second half of 2023)
>
> The released datasets need to meet certain privacy requirements:
>
>-
>
>They can not include any natural language (e.g. specific search
>queries or deletion logs) so as to avoid the release of personally
>identifiable information;
>-
>
>They need to be sufficiently large (at least thousands of entries,
>preferably more) so as to reduce noise;
>-
>
>The data can not be so sensitive that an individual user will be
>harmed by disclosure of the data (e.g. IP addresses, content containing
>personally identifying information).
>
>
> We invite you to complete a brief survey
> 
> to help us identify and prioritize the types of datasets that you would
> find useful for your work. Results of this survey will inform the fifth
> dataset, scheduled to be released in late 2023. This survey is conducted
> via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For
> more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy
> statement:
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Data_Release_Priorities_Survey_Privacy_Statement
>
> The survey will remain open until November 3, 2022. After that time,
> members of the Research and Security teams will review the data and report
> out about the suggestions that were received and how the work will proceed.
> If you prefer to not respond via the Google form, you can email your
> feedback to us or set up a time to discuss. You can also leave questions
> and comments on the Talk page:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
>
> Emily Lescak, WMF Research team
>
> Hal Triedman, WMF Security team
>
>
> --
> Emily Lescak (she / her)
> Senior Research Community Officer
> The Wikimedia Foundation
>
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[Wiki-research-l] Re: Best practices for researchers soliciting off-wiki interviews

[Isaac Johnson]

Hey Jodi -- thanks for asking the question. Some of my thoughts about how
researchers can solicit off-wiki interviews:

   - If you have not already created one, I suggest creating a project page
   on Meta  and linking
   to it in any posts. This gives interested editors a single page on wiki
   where they can find relevant information on the project if they're curious.
   The benefit of Meta in particular is that it also provides a consistent
   format, has privacy/transparency guarantees, has a place for discussion
   (talk page), and is discoverable by other researchers.
   - If the research is extractive in some way (i.e. not just passive data
   analysis but asking for editor's time as with interviews), you want to make
   sure it also provides clear benefits for those Wikimedian
   individuals/communities. When soliciting interviews, it isq quite helpful
   to communicate these benefits to editors so they can judge whether it's
   worthwhile to participate.
   - Your inclination to post on talk pages for topic-specific WikiProjects
   (collaborative spaces) is spot on. This helps a lot with reducing
   interview-request spam for editors and if your research leads to actionable
   findings / tools, then you have a community of folks who know the project
   and you can hopefully work with to disseminate.
   - Start small (maybe posting to one group to begin with). This wll help
   you gather feedback -- e.g., address questions/concerns from editors --
   before posting in more places.
   - Also consider looking for local events to attend -- e.g., an
   edit-a-thon or Wikimedian conference
   . This is a great way to find
   editors for interviews in more relaxed spaces and potentially get to
   observe and ask questions about their editing processes first-hand. For
   instance, I saw you're at UIUC: maybe the Wikimedians of Chicago User
   Group
   

   has events that could be attended? Sometimes there are nearby
   Wikimedians-in-Residence
   

   who could potentially help you connect with local communities as well.

Hope that helps and curious to hear thoughts from others.

Best,
Isaac

On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 5:42 PM Jodi Schneider  wrote:

> Hi wiki-research-l folks,
>
> Can the list point me in the right direction about how researchers should
> solicit off-wiki interviews? I'm seeking to interview editors of English
> Wikipedia who have provided information about scientific and technical
> topics. I'm struggling to find up-to-date documentation about expectations
> for researchers...
>
> Currently the focus is COVID-19; in future years the focus will shift to
> climate change; and AI and labor. Overall the project seeks to understand
> how knowledge brokers (including Wikipedia editors) assess the quality of
> technical and scientific information. This is part of my 3-year, US-based,
> IRB-approved research study:
> https://infoqualitylab.org/projects/knowledgebrokers/participate-y1
>
> My inclination (in the absence of specific best practice directions) would
> be to post a message the Talk pages of the most obvious WikiProjects, with
> information about the project and how to reach me:
> WikiProject COVID-19
> WikiProject Medicine / Pulmonology
> WikiProject Viruses
> WikiProject Disaster management
> Is that appropriate? I'd welcome a pointer to specific requirements or best
> practices. Offline advice also welcome!
>
> -Jodi
> User:Jodi.a.schneider
> jschnei...@pobox.com
> https://jodischneider.com/jodi.html
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list -- wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wiki-research-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>


-- 
Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Senior Research Scientist -- Wikimedia
Foundation
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[Wiki-research-l] [Wikimedia Research Showcase] January 18

[Emily Lescak]

Hello everyone,

The next Research Showcase, focused on Editor Retention, will be
live-streamed Wednesday, January 18. Find your local time here
.

YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS8ELcVZ8Q4

You can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You can also
watch our past research showcases here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase

This month's presentations:
Vital Signsː Measuring Wikipedia Communities’ HealthBy *Cristian Consonni,
Eurecat - Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya, Barcelona*Community health in
Wikipedia is a complex topic that has been at the center of discussion for
Wikipedia and the scientific community for years. Researchers observed that
the number of active editors for the largest Wikipedias started declining
after an initial phase of exponential growth. Some media outlets picked
this fact as a death announcement for the project, but the news of
Wikipedia's death turned out to be greatly exaggerated. However, it remains
true that researchers and community activists need to understand how to
measure community health and describe it more accurately. In this
presentation, we would like to go beyond the traditional metrics used to
describe the status of the community. We propose the creation of 6 sets of
language-independent indicators that we call "Vital Signs." We borrow the
analogy from the medical field, as these indicators represent a first step
in defining the health status of a community; they can constitute a
valuable reference point to foresee and prevent future risks. We present
our analysis for several Wikipedia language editions, showing that
communities renew their productive force even with stagnating absolute
numbers; we observe a general need for renewal in positions related to
particular functions or administratorship. We created a dashboard to
visualize all the indicators we have computed and hope that the communities
will find it helpful for improving their health.

   - Paperː Community Vital Signs: Measuring Wikipedia Communities’
   Sustainable Growth and Renewal
   



Learning to Predict the Departure Dynamics of Wikidata EditorsBy *Guangyuan
Piao, Maynooth University*Wikidata as one of the largest open collaborative
knowledge bases has drawn much attention from researchers and practitioners
since its launch in 2012. As it is collaboratively developed and maintained
by a community of a great number of volunteer editors, understanding and
predicting the departure dynamics of those editors are crucial but have not
been studied extensively in previous works. In this paper, we investigate
the synergistic effect of two different types of features: statistical and
pattern-based ones with DeepFM as our classification model which has not
been explored in a similar context and problem for predicting whether a
Wikidata editor will stay or leave the platform. Our experimental results
show that using the two sets of features with DeepFM provides the best
performance regarding AUROC (0.9561) and F1 score (0.8843), and achieves
substantial improvement compared to using either of the sets of features
and over a wide range of baselines.

   - Paperː Learning to Predict the Departure Dynamics of Wikidata Editors
   



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