Research into Requests for Comments and the closing process

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Report/Reflection on CHI 2017

Amy Zhang

31 May 2017 31 May '17

7:40 p.m.

Hi all, We are preparing to conduct some research into the process of how Requests for Comments (RfCs) get discussed and closed. This work is further described in the following Wikimedia page: https://meta.wikimedia.o rg/wiki/Research:Discussion_summarization_and_decision_support_with_Wikum To begin, we are planning to do a round of interviews with people who participate in RfCs in English Wikipedia, including frequent closers, infrequent closers, and people who participate in but don't close RfCs. We will be asking them about how they go about closing RfCs and their opinions on how the overall process could be improved. We are also creating a database of all the RfCs on English Wikipedia that have gone through a formal closure process and parsing their conversations. While planning the interviews, we thought that the information that we gather could be of interest to the Wikimedia community, so we wanted to open it up and ask if there was anything you would be interested in learning about RfCs or RfC closure from people who participate in them. Also, if you know of existing work in this area, please let us know. Thank you! Amy -- Amy X. Zhang | Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL | http://people.csail.mit.edu/axz | @amyxzh

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Pine W

31 May 31 May

8:04 p.m.

New subject: Research into Requests for Comments and the closing process

Hi Amy, That sounds like a great topic for research. As an extension of your planned scope, I would encourage you to do some comparisons between ENWP's RfC process and those on other Wikimedia sites, as there are some noteworthy differences among sites, both among language variants of Wikipedia and among different projects. You might also want to research how consensus has been defined over time and in different contexts, and what the outcomes have been in situations where there has been "no consensus". Pine On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 12:40 PM, Amy Zhang <axz(a)mit.edu> wrote:

...

Jonathan Cardy

8:15 p.m.

Dear Amy, That's an interesting topic, for your database you might want to just filter your dataset for some outliers that start and close on the first of April broadly construed (it is more than forty hours from when April Fools day starts in New Zealand to when it ends in California). Regards Jonathan

...

On 31 May 2017, at 20:40, Amy Zhang <axz(a)mit.edu> wrote: Hi all, We are preparing to conduct some research into the process of how Requests for Comments (RfCs) get discussed and closed. This work is further described in the following Wikimedia page: https://meta.wikimedia.o rg/wiki/Research:Discussion_summarization_and_decision_support_with_Wikum To begin, we are planning to do a round of interviews with people who participate in RfCs in English Wikipedia, including frequent closers, infrequent closers, and people who participate in but don't close RfCs. We will be asking them about how they go about closing RfCs and their opinions on how the overall process could be improved. We are also creating a database of all the RfCs on English Wikipedia that have gone through a formal closure process and parsing their conversations. While planning the interviews, we thought that the information that we gather could be of interest to the Wikimedia community, so we wanted to open it up and ask if there was anything you would be interested in learning about RfCs or RfC closure from people who participate in them. Also, if you know of existing work in this area, please let us know. Thank you! Amy -- Amy X. Zhang | Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL | http://people.csail.mit.edu/axz | @amyxzh _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Samuel Klein

8:47 p.m.

New subject: Research into Requests for Comments and the closing process

Also RfC practice has varied dramatically over the years; and across wiki communities of different sizes; and varies strongly with the quality of the summary being commented on. In many contexts & scales it is ineffective; in others it can work well. A good RfC leads to useful improvement almost all of the time, regardless of outcome. A bad one has the outcome "do nothing unless a supermajority of people agree with the proposal as initially written". You might also want to reach out to other collaborative communities -- other wikis, Loomio? IETF? -- for compraison of what they like and would change about their variations :) On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 10:15 PM, Jonathan Cardy < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 31 May 2017, at 20:40, Amy Zhang <axz(a)mit.edu> wrote: Hi all, We are preparing to conduct some research into the process of how

Requests

for Comments (RfCs) get discussed and closed. This work is further described in the following Wikimedia page: https://meta.wikimedia.o rg/wiki/Research:Discussion_summarization_and_decision_

support_with_Wikum

To begin, we are planning to do a round of interviews with people who participate in RfCs in English Wikipedia, including frequent closers, infrequent closers, and people who participate in but don't close RfCs.

will be asking them about how they go about closing RfCs and their

opinions

on how the overall process could be improved. We are also creating a database of all the RfCs on English Wikipedia that have gone through a formal closure process and parsing their conversations. While planning the interviews, we thought that the information that we gather could be of interest to the Wikimedia community, so we wanted to open it up and ask if there was anything you would be interested in learning about RfCs or RfC closure from people who participate in them. Also, if you know of existing work in this area, please let us know. Thank you! Amy -- Amy X. Zhang | Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL | http://people.csail.mit.edu/

axz

| @amyxzh _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266

Amy Zhang

1 Jun 1 Jun

4:20 p.m.

New subject: Research into Requests for Comments and the closing process

Thank you all for the pointers! On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 1:47 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Dear Amy, That's an interesting topic, for your database you might want to just filter your dataset for some outliers that start and close on the first

April broadly construed (it is more than forty hours from when April

Fools

day starts in New Zealand to when it ends in California). Regards Jonathan

On 31 May 2017, at 20:40, Amy Zhang <axz(a)mit.edu> wrote: Hi all, We are preparing to conduct some research into the process of how

Requests

for Comments (RfCs) get discussed and closed. This work is further described in the following Wikimedia page: https://meta.wikimedia.o rg/wiki/Research:Discussion_summarization_and_decision_

support_with_Wikum

will be asking them about how they go about closing RfCs and their

opinions > on how the overall process could be improved. We are also creating a > database of all the RfCs on English Wikipedia that have gone through a > formal closure process and parsing their conversations. > > While planning the interviews, we thought that the information that we > gather could be of interest to the Wikimedia community, so we wanted to > open it up and ask if there was anything you would be interested in > learning about RfCs or RfC closure from people who participate in them. > Also, if you know of existing work in this area, please let us know. > > Thank you! > > Amy > > > -- > Amy X. Zhang | Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL |

http://people.csail.mit.edu/

axz

| @amyxzh _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Amy X. Zhang | Ph.D. student at MIT CSAIL | http://people.csail.mit.edu/axz | @amyxzh

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Amy Zhang
Jonathan Cardy
Pine W
Samuel Klein