If RCOM needs more volunteer Wikimedians, the alive and well IEG Committee includes a Research Working Group that reviews grant proposals for WMF funding through the IEG program, so RCOM could reach out to IEGCom. I'm on IEGCom and the RWG but I can't speak for RCOM. (:
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:
I guess I was not so much thinking of an general invitation to the R&D Showcase but a specific “expectation” (albeit couched as an invitation) on those given permission to recruit via WMF channels to give a few short (or long as appropriate to the stage of their research) talks on their project. Ditto research projects supported through IEG or similar.
I agree that OpenSym is available as a research conference but it is not run by our community and therefore doesn’t help to create a sense of community with the researchers in question. Wikimania is run by our community but isn’t a research conference (would not count as a publication for academic purposes). But I don’t know if it’s realistic to try to establish another conference in terms of the volunteer effort to run it.
Kerry
From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Halfaker
Sent: Friday, 18 July 2014 1:45 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
Kerry said:
Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we perhaps do things to try to make the researcher feel part of the community to make “giving back” more likely? For example, could we give them a slot every now and again to talk about their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage them to be on this mailing list. Are we at a point where it might make sense to organise a Wikipedia research conference to help build a research community? Just thinking aloud here …
This is a bit different than the main topic, so I wanted to break it out into another reply.
We just had Nate Matias[0] from the MIT media lab present on his work at the last showcase[1]. We also just sent out a survey about the showcase that includes a call for recommended speakers at future showcases[2]. As for a Wikipedia research conference, see OpenSym[3] (formerly WikiSym) and Wikimania[4] (not as researchy, but a great venue to maximize wiki research impact).
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker@gmail.com> wrote:
> Aaron, when I read that it is active because I had heard from others in your team about a year or two ago that this wasn't going to be the vehicle for obtaining permission going forward and that a new, more lightweight process was being designed.
1) If anyone told you that we are no longer active, they were wrong.
2) The "lightweight" process you refer to is what I linked to in enwiki in my previous response. See again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
Generally, there seems to be a misconception that RCom == paid WMF activities. While RCom involves a relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation, our activities as part of RCom are 100% volunteer and open to participation from other Wikipedians (seriously, let me know if you want to help out!), and as such, our backlog tends to suffer when our available volunteer time does. FWIW, I became involved in this work as a volunteer (before I started working with the WMF). With that in mind, it seems like we are not discussing RCom itself which is mostly inactive -- so much as we are discussing the subject recruitment review process which is still active. Let me state this clearly: If you send an email to me or Dario about a research project that you would like reviewed, we will help you coordinate a review. Our job as review coordinators is to make sure that the study is adequately documented and that Wikipedians and other researchers are pulled in to discuss the material. We don't just welcome broad involvement -- we need it! We all suffer from the lack of it. Please show up help us!
To give you some context on the current stats and situation, I should probably give a bit of history. I've been working to improve subject recruitment review -- with the goal of improving interactions between researchers and Wikipedians -- for years. Let me first say that I'm game to make this better. In my experience, the biggest issue to documenting the a review/endorsement/whatever process that I have come across is this: there seems to be a lot of people who feel that minimizing process description provides power and adaptability to intended processes[1]. It's these people that I've regularly battled in my frequent efforts to increase the formalization around the subject recruitment proposal vetting process (e.g. SRAG had a structured appeals process and stated timelines). The result of these battles is the severely under-documented process "described" in meta:R:FAQ.
Here's some links to my previous work on subject recruitment process that will show these old discussions about process creep.
· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group
· https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Research&oldid=354600173
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Research/Archive_1
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Research/Archive_2 -- Note that this was actually an enwiki policy for about 5 hours before the RfC was overturned due to too few editors being involved in the straw poll.
For new work, see my current (but stalled for about 1.5 years) push for a structured process on English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment See also the checklist I have been working on with Lane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment/Wikipedian_checklist
When you review these docs and the corresponding conversations, please keep in mind that I was a new Wikipedian for the development of WP:SRAG and WP:Research, so I made some really critical mistakes -- like taking hyperbolic criticism of the proposals personally. :\
So what now? Well, in the meantime, if you let me know about some subject recruitment you want to do, I'll help you find someone to coordinate a review that fits within the process described in the RCom docs. In the short term, are any of you folks interested in going through some iterations of the new WP:Research_recruitment policy doc?
-Aaron
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa@gmail.com> wrote:
Agree with Kerry that we really need to have a more flexible process that speaks to the main problem that (I think) RCOM was started to solve i.e. that Wikipedians were getting tired of being continually contacted by researchers to fill out *surveys*. I'm not sure where feelings are about that right now (I certainly haven't seen a huge amount of surveys myself) but I guess the big question right now is whether RCOM is actually active or not. I must say that I was surprised, Aaron, when I read that it is active because I had heard from others in your team about a year or two ago that this wasn't going to be the vehicle for obtaining permission going forward and that a new, more lightweight process was being designed. As Nathan discusses on the Wikimedia-l list, there aren't many indications that RCOM is still active. Perhaps there has been a recent decision to resuscitate it? If that's the case, let us know about it :) And then we can discuss what needs to happen to build a good process.
One immediate requirement that I've been talking to others about is finding ways of making the case to the WMF as a group of researchers for the anonymization of country level data, for example. I've spoken to a few researchers (and I myself made a request about a year ago that hasn't been responded to) and it seems like some work is required by the foundation to do this anonymisation but that there are a few of us who would be really keen to use this data to produce research very valuable to Wikipedia - especially from smaller language versions/developing countries. Having an official process that assesses how worthwhile this investment of time would be to the Foundation would be a great idea, I think, but right now there seems to be a general focus on the research that the Foundation does itself rather than enabling researchers outside. I know how busy Aaron and Dario (and others in the team) are so perhaps this requires a new position to coordinate between researchers and Foundation resources?
Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are any plans for RCOM that have been made by the research team and the only people who can answer that are folks in the research team :)
Best,
Heather.
Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme
EthnographyMatters | Oxford Digital Ethnography Group
http://hblog.org | @hfordsa
On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I meant the community/communities of WMF. But the authority of the community derives from WMF, which chooses to delegate such matters. I think that “advise” is a good word to use.
Kerry
From: Amir E. Aharoni [mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il]
Sent: Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM
To: kerry.raymond@gmail.com; Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
> WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes.
I don't think that it really should be about WMF. The WMF shouldn't enforce anything. The community can formulate good practices for researchers and _advise_ community members not to cooperate with researchers who don't follow these practices. Not much more is needed.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-07-17 8:24 GMT+03:00 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com>:
Just saying here what I already put on the Talk page:
I am a little bothered by the opening sentence "This page documents the process that researchers must follow before asking Wikipedia contributors to participate in research studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments."
WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. What WMF does own is its communication channels to me as a contributor and WMF has a right to control what occurs on those channels. Also I think WMF probably should be concerned about both its readers and its contributors being recruited through its channels (as either might be being recruited). I think this distinction should be made, e.g.
"This page documents the process that researchers must follow if they wish to use Wikipedia's (WMF's?) communication channels to recruit people to participate in research studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments. Communication channels include its mailing lists, its Project pages, Talk pages, and User Talk pages [and whatever else I've forgotten]."
If researchers want to recruit WPians via non-WMF means, I don’t think it’s any business of WMF’s. An example might be a researcher who wanted to contact WPians via chapters or thorgs; I would leave it for the chapter/thorg to decide if they wanted to assist the researcher via their communication channels.
Of course, the practical reality of it is that some researchers (oblivious of WMF’s concerns in relation to recruitment of WPians to research projects) will simply use WMF’s channels without asking nicely first. Obviously we can remove such requests on-wiki and follow up any email requests with the commentary that this was not an approved request. In my category of [whatever else I’ve forgotten], I guess there are things like Facebook groups and any other social media presence.
Also to be practical, if WMF is to have a process to vet research surveys, I think it has to be sufficiently fast and not be overly demanding to avoid the possibility of the researcher giving up (“too hard to deal with these people”) and simply spamming email, project pages, social media in the hope of recruiting some participants regardless. That is, if we make it too slow/hard to do the right thing, we effectively encourage doing the wrong thing. Also, what value-add can we give them to reward those who do the right thing? It’s nice to have a carrot as well as a stick when it comes to onerous processes J
Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we perhaps do things to try to make the researcher feel part of the community to make “giving back” more likely? For example, could we give them a slot every now and again to talk about their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage them to be on this mailing list. Are we at a point where it might make sense to organise a Wikipedia research conference to help build a research community? Just thinking aloud here …
Kerry
From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Halfaker
Sent: Thursday, 17 July 2014 6:59 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
RCOM review is still alive and looking for new reviewers (really, coordinators). Researchers can be directed to me or Dario (dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org) to be assigned a reviewer. There is also a proposed policy on enwiki that could use some eyeballs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com> wrote:
phoebe ayers, 16/07/2014 19:21:
> (Personally, I think the answer should be to resuscitate RCOM, but
> that's easy to say and harder to do!)IMHO in the meanwhile the most useful thing folks can do is subscribing
to the feed of new research pages:
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=atom&hidebots=1&hideredirs=1&limit=500&offset=&namespace=202>
It's easier to build a functioning RCOM out of an active community of
"reviewers", than the other way round.
Nemo
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