Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemow...@gmail.com> writes: > Heather Ford, 01/07/2014 14:37: >> We want to encourage more research on Wikipedia, not attack the >> motivations of people we know little about > > I'm not sure about the specific wording, but I think the intention is > only to stress the importance of open access/open source/open data in > research on Wikimedia projects and wikis. I think it's fair for a > Wikimedia community publication to call "disappointing" a closed source, > non-replicable experiment.
Why should we infer that the experiment is not replicable? Open source software isn't a requirement for that. At the same time, given that the review finds the comparison to Wikipedia "misleading", why should we assume that open source tools would convey any benefit to their putative Wikipedian users? If however the research is sufficiently interesting that the reviewer would like to have a look at the software, wouldn't it be polite to ask the person for a copy, rather than give them a negative review because they (for whatever reasons) didn't already release the software? Maybe they had a good reason for that - if not, they might be happy to share if asked. From the review: > this reviewer was unable to locate any proof that the developer > engaged the Wikipedia community It's possible that they might have had a good reason for that, too. It probably doesn't make their research less valid *as research* although it would make some claims weaker -- and/or call for further research, as studies usually do. Again, if it's of genuine interest, the interested party just might have to do the good old fashioned thing and ring up the author, thereby rendering them *part* of a community, rather than alienating them since they didn't happen to call first. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
