Hi, In case any of you aren't aware there are a couple of requests for
comment that involve us.
One on EN wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Central_Notices…
on my reading is divided between those who want to put some control
on research surveys and those who say its pointless discussing it - the WMF
will act regardless.
The other is on meta. There isn't quite unanimity at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_banners#Require_…
but the first 23 voices were all in support. I would suggest that though
this RFC has not yet been closed, considering the depth of feeling it would
make sense for us to proceed as if it had been closed on the basis that
use of Global Banners for non-fundraising purposes require consensus
support for use of central notice.
My reading is that the community could be persuaded to accept a limited
amount of surveying, but we would need to be able to convince people that
we could control the amount of it. I would be surprised if the en
discussion were to be closed as constituting consensus for the resumption
of the Berkman survey.
I'm intending to add a section to the meta debate seeking consent in
principle for an annual Omnibus survey, but I won't file that until after
tomorrow's skype chat.
Regards
WSC
All,
the fundraiser team is currently reviewing with Legal a project that involves a collaboration with All Our Ideas - http://allourideas.org
If you haven't heard of it, AOI is an open source platform for public consultation designed by Matt Salganik, a sociologist based at Princeton University.
AOI has been used by local authorities, organizations and movements (such as OWS) to allow large collectives of individuals to suggest, rank and prioritize ideas.
The goal of this collaboration is to open up the fundraiser design process to readers and community members. You can read more at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Banner_Challenge
Matt will be available to answer any questions you may have on the project's talk page.
If you wish to contact the WMF team involved in this collaboration you can drop a line to Megan or Zack.
Dario
Dear All,
After the rather hostile response on the English language wikipedia to the
Berkman survey I would like to revive my proposal from five months ago for
an annual Omnibus survey.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Omnibus_Survey
I appreciate that this would put some constraints on the researchers and
would actually cost the Foundation a bit of money. But unless someone else
can come up with an alternative way of fairly throttling research surveys
to the point where the community can accept them, I would suggest that this
is the only viable option on the table other than a simple blanket ban on
third party research surveys.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
All,
this is to give everybody the heads up on a CentralNotice campaign that we launched hours ago to support a research project involving English Wikipedia editors. The project is run by the Berkman Center and Sciences Po and has been extensively reviewed for about a year by the research committee, the WMF Legal team, the Community and Tech depts and discussed in community fora [1]
The banner is going live for a few days (target end of the campaign: Monday night, conditional on the number of completed responses) and is being displayed only to a subset of logged-in editors of the English Wikipedia meeting a series of eligibility conditions. The banner has been designed to minimize disruption to our editors as requested during the community consultation process.
Since we are getting the first confused reactions from the community via different channels, I asked the researchers involved in the project (Jérôme Hergueux and RCom member Mayo Fuster) to set up a FAQ page prominently placed on the project description on Meta [2] and Jérôme has already started to draft one. This should allow us to have a central place to address community concerns on why we are doing this and point people to the long discussion and review process that led to the decision to support this project.
I have been working on this project to support the technical/legal implications longer than I expected and I'll try and catch up with my RCom backlog as soon as possible.
Dario
[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/08/experiment-decision-making/
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and…
All,
here's a message from Siko, WMF Head of Community Fellowships. As with the 2011 Summer of Research, WMF is willing to fund research (both in the form of individual fellowships and small grants) to contribute to a better understanding of our community and projects. While there are existing procedures for community fellowships and grants, we don't have guidelines to apply for research fellowships/research grants.
Some community members have started submitting research proposals for RCom review and I thought this could be a good chance to get Siko and Asaf (Head of the WMF grants program) to help us draft guidelines for the evaluation of research fellowship/research grant proposals, which are currently missing from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ
What I envision is a two-tiered process:
(1) RCom will first review proposals based on its standard procedures, regardless of funding requests. We will solicit the opinion of external referees via a single-blind review process when needed (we did this for the EPIC/Oxford proposal). We will then write our recommendations whether a specific proposal is methodologically sound, relevant and non-disruptive to our community to help WMF make a funding decision .
(2) WMF will request supplementary information to projects applying for funding and use this information, feedback from RCom and its internal assessment of the priority/usefulness of the proposal to make a funding decision.
This will help RCom focus on the research value of the proposal per se while leaving to the WMF fellowship/grant program the actual funding decision. On a related note, I am working closely with Philippe Beaudette to configure SugarCRM to help us triage, handle and assign requests for RCom review.
Please let me know if you have any comments or concerns on the overall proposal. As Siko notes, the Dispute Resolution project below is a research proposal from a community member asking for regular SR support/review, not a WMF-sponsored project, and potentially a good case to get this process started.
Dario
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Siko Bouterse <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>
> Date: November 22, 2011 10:33:58 AM PST
> To: Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: surveys by community members
>
> Hi Dario,
>
> This is a survey request from a community member interested in learning more about his Wikipedia projects, for RCom's review:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Dispute_Resolution
>
> Background:
> Steven Zhang is active in MedCab and the creator of some other DR pages and processes on EN:WP. I've been speaking with him about the possibility of doing a fellowship on dispute resolution, though an exact project is still to be pinned down and nothing is approved for fellowship at this point. Although the survey is not an official WMF project, and Steven is acting in the capacity of community member, I am interested in the results of his survey to learn more about current issues with DR and see if there are projects that we should support in the form of a fellowship.
>
> This may be a growing need, I've gotten a couple of similar inquiries so far and expect they will increase as we ramp up community fellowships. I'm curious to know what the RCom process looks like for surveys run by community members, some of whom might not have the same research background or methodological training as academic researchers, but are motivated to learn and share understanding about their community and projects. Is this something worth asking about on the RCom list? (If so, feel free to forward my message).
>
> In this case, its a relatively small sample size so hopefully not too disruptive. I think Steven could also use some guidance about what free survey collector would be recommended for use - is RCom ok with something simple like Google Forms or have other recommendations?
>
> Thanks!
> Siko
>
> --
> Siko Bouterse
> Head of Community Fellowships
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
>
>
Hey folks,
This proposal is an important milestone for our subject recruitment
processes, since it represents the first mass recruitment request (200-300
responses needed). I'm hoping to either show a high level of support with
this poll or discover what problems still need to be dealt with.
I'd like to close the poll by *Wednesday @ noon UTC*. Please make sure to
chime in.
See poll:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Anonymity_and_conformity_over_…
-Aaron