Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)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.