Hi Alex, On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Alex Yarovoy <yarovoy.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All, > > I'm a Master student working under the supervision of Drs. Arazy and Minkov > (Haifa U) > This is great. :) Thanks in advance for the time and effort you will put to help us improve (our understanding of) Wikimedia projects. > My research explores the extent to which "recognized domain experts" > contribute to Wikipedia. > (I use a narrow definition for "recognized domain experts" to include those > with academic qualifications in the relevant topic). > I manually tracked these experts using a variety of sources, and then use > machine learning methods for automatically identifying domain experts > within Wikipedia editors. > I'm not sure if this part of your research is done, if it's not, section 2.3.1. of https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03235.pdf can be of interest to you as a starting point for building topical models based on past contributions. > I'm writing to explore whether this research is on interest to the > community and to learn if other people have already tackled this research > question. > I'm not speaking on behalf of the community but providing my personal view which should be counted as one view: :) We don't have a good understanding of why experts (the way you define the term) do or do not contribute to Wikipedia (or other Wikimedia projects). Understanding the incentive mechanisms (and I emphasize on mechanisms) that can encourage these people to contribute is very valuable. Understanding the blockers for their contributions (which can be related to the incentive problem, but not necessarily), is also very valuable. We also don't understand how such incentives change across Wikipedia languages or Wikimedia projects, if at all (For example, does a professional photographer who uploads photos to Wikimedia Commons do this with the same incentive as a doctor adding content about an epidemic on Hindi Wikipedia or a university professor who is improving articles on convex optimization in Hebrew?) What I'd like to recommend is that you keep the practical component of the research you will be doing in this space in mind. A good rule of thumb is: if I answer question x, how will it help Wikimedians recruit for or encourage such experts to join Wikimedia? This is a high bar to meet, especially in a master thesis, but it's a good bar to keep in mind as you think about research questions. :) Good luck with your research! :) Best, Leila p.s. btw, do make sure you share the result of your research as you develop it with the research community. We have, for example, Wiki Workshop which happens at least once a year and we'd love to hear more about your research there. (last year's page: http://wikiworkshop.org/2017/ ) We had Ofer as an invited speaker to the workshop a couple of years ago. :) -- Leila Zia Senior Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation > Thank you in advance for pointing me to relevant research projects > Alex > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
