Dear all,
I agree that "the existence of a fixed-membership group with a
recognized authority on any possible matter related to Wikimedia
research and associated policies" is not a priority, and think it
probably never was, since initiatives as those outlined by Dario seem
to have been anticipated.
Anyway, what I think we do need is a Wikimedia equivalent of an
ethical review panel, and RCom would be a good channel for that,
ideally with the help of some others, as appropriate to the topic
(here, we should perhaps think about involving relevant WikiProjects,
user groups etc. more). I have just drafted a Research Newsletter
entry that highlights this need once more (search for "integrity" on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-12-25/Recen…
).
Cheers,
Daniel
--
http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en/institution/mitarbeiter/mietchen-d…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Publications
http://okfn.org
http://wikimedia.org
On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Dario Taraborelli
<dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi everybody,
I received a few days ago a request to merge and redirect the almost
inactive #wikimedia-rcom IRC channel to #wikimedia-research (a public
channel open to anyone but primarily operated by the WMF Research and Data
team). I agreed with this proposal but I’d be happy to put it on hold if
others think that a dedicated RCom channel still serves a purpose.
A little bit of retrospective. The Research Committee as a group with a
fixed membership and a regular meeting schedule has been inactive for a very
long time. However, a number of RCom initiatives have continued to grow
organically over the years thanks to the effort of individual members. These
include:
(1) the monthly Research Newsletter [1] has been continuously published
since July 2011 and is now close to completing its 3rd volume, thanks to
Tilman Bayer’s commitment and unwavering dedication and a number of
occasional or recurring contributors;
(2) the @WikiResearch handle [2], originally designed as a companion to the
newsletter, today is followed by almost 1.5K users and brings together a
large community of editors, researchers, journalists and members of the
public interested in research on Wikimedia projects;
(3) Subject Recruitment requests [3] have kept trickling in. If they
received timely support and an adequate response, it’s primarily thanks to
Aaron Halfaker’s effort. Aaron joined WMF a few months ago as a full-time
member of the Research and Data team but he is still investing some of his
time in supporting these requests, despite the lack of formal legal or
community policies backing the RCom approval process.
(4) Open Access initiatives led by Daniel Mietchen have spawned, among other
things, a dedicated Wikiproject [4] and OA is now becoming an opportunity of
active collaboration between Wikimedians and open knowledge/open science
advocates, thanks to the work of Daniel, Andrea Zanni, Lane Rasberry, to
name just a few. OA was big last summer at Wikimania ’13 and it will be even
bigger this coming year in London. [5]
Other outreach initiatives similar in spirit to the RCom’s – such as Labs2
and WikiResearch hackathons [6] – have taken off thanks to the
self-organized effort of like-minded individuals.
I am very proud of these achievements, which wouldn’t have been possible
without many of you donating time and energy to push them forward (and I am
sure I’m omitting other ideas born under the RCom brand that I am less
familiar with). I am also glad that decentralization produced the desired
effect of freeing individual projects from coordination costs and allowed
them to grow at their own pace.
I take these success stories as evidence that the existence of a
fixed-membership group with a recognized authority on any possible matter
related to Wikimedia research and associated policies has ceased to be a
priority. I believe this is the right operating model, given the diversity
of projects that fell under the original scope of the RCom, but I’d like to
hear if others on this list have a different opinion.
Meanwhile, best wishes of happy holidays to you and your families.
Dario
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter
[2]
https://twitter.com/WikiResearch
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Subject_recruitment
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Open_Access
[5]
http://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Outreach/Open_access
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2/Hackathons
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