Although it’s not a proposal to do research per se, I think this is a proposal that researchers need to support as it’s pretty fundamental:

 

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Face_new_editors_with_the_possibility_of_specifying_their_gender

 

In a nutshell, it seeks gender information on sign-up. In my endorsement I wrote:

 

Endorse. If we don't know the gender of our editors, we can't measure progress towards the diversity objective. Nor can we undertake the range of other research proposed. We should ask for gender on sign-up (of course, with an opt-out) with an explanation of why we are asking. It should be made clear that this information is for WMF's statistical/research purposes and not disclosed to others. We have reports and graphs of editor activity on-wiki; let's offer a couple more lines on those graphs: male and female (and I guess "don't know") to see how they change in response to other changes. Let's provide monthly reports on male/female activities any categories which are large enough to prevent gender identification of individual editors. We need such this "diversity dashboard" to know what is happening and (in broad terms) when/where it's happening. 

 

Indeed, I would probably go further and say we need to also try to encourage existing editors to provide this information too. What’s the point of A/B testing a gender-diversity “solution” if we cannot tell if it is changing anything?

 

I’d encourage anyone with an interest in any gendered research question to support this proposal.

 

In the interests of CoI, I have no involvement in this proposal and, as far as one can tell with pseudonymous accounts, no connection to its proposers.

 

Kerry

 

 

From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan
Sent: Thursday, 26 March 2015 3:15 AM
To: Wiki Research-l
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] YOUR INPUT NEEDED on Inspire Campaign researchproposals!

 

Hi there wiki-researchers,

 

We have 6 days left in Phase 1 of the Wikimedia Inspire campaign and we've received quite a few compelling research proposals. When you have a moment this week, please peruse these proposals and endorse/comment upon them. I've included a list of proposals below that seem to have gained some traction and/or are reasonably detailed.

 

 

Any input or insight you can provide on these proposals will be valuable: you can ask questions to make them think, suggest methods, theories, or refinements to their research questions, or point the proposers to relevant literature. 

 

For example, the proposal "Research gender affinity for different subjects on Wikipedia" would probably benefit from a pointer to the WP:Clubhouse paper, which investigates that phenomenon within the scope of movie articles.

 

If you find a project particularly compelling, you can even join it as a volunteer or (potential) grantee. 

 

Like I said, any help is helpful! Although keep in mind that not every proposer has the profound depth of research background that you do, My Esteemed Colleagues. So please focus on providing constructive input and assume good faith ;)

 

Full list of ideas that have been classified as "research" is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire/Ideas_by_theme#Research_ideas

 

You can view all ideas at the main campaign page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire

 

Thank you in advance for your support! I'll update this list in a month or so to let y'all know which of these projects will be going forward with WMF support.

 

Best,

Jonathan

--

Jonathan T. Morgan

Community Research Lead

Wikimedia Foundation