As I mentioned earlier, I was not sure about the multiple account policy. I
got the notification about the incident being raised, and I will be happy
with whatever decisions Wiki administrators make.
As Denny mentioned, we did not plan anything large-scale but only for a
small group of edits. Furthermore, we mentioned the results only being
valid until a particular date before the submission of that conference
paper and things may have already changed a lot (articles removed, edited
further, etc). We have not made any additions since Feb, nor do we plan to
do anything further. Whatever we do, would be offline.
To Denny's point about other researchers trying to do the same kind of
research, I do see research in this area coming up and it might make sense
to have certain rules (although I do not have much idea on how these things
work abt rules on Wiki in general.) I know this because some researchers
have contacted me previously on this work, and they are also looking into
similar areas. One example in this area of work is the following -- this is
very recent:
http://snap.stanford.edu/wikiworkshop2016/papers/wikiworkshop_icwsm2016_poc…
Regarding human subjects, no reviewers in the conferences as well as any
other person from Wikimedia mentioned anything on that earlier. Our
previous works were featured earlier on Wikimedia newsletters (links in
earlier emails) and still nothing on it was mentioned nor we found any
information on Wikipedia in general about it. As per the requirements,
approval would be necessary if: *Data about living individuals through
intervention or interaction or **Identifiable private information about
living individuals. *As is mentioned. the "about" fact is very imp --
because nothing about editors data was used or collected in the research.
If rules do change, I will keep following the thread and also please let me
know -- I will try to inform to all researchers who work in this area if
they get in touch with me.
-- Siddhartha