I would point out the difference between (concept) conflation vs (technological) convergence.

To my knowledge, the meta data, i.e. the possible data about its user-readers and user-contributors are sometimes gathered systematically for user experience (UX) and interface testing, data analytics and research (both in-house and external). Most of the time such metadata could be framed as behavioral, or be aggregated as social groups.

So the questions come back to us, the subscribers of "Research into Wikimedia content and communities". Have we generated some type of *revenue from mining its user contributed data*? 

I would thus suggest using the term meta-data to describe any user data/patterns that can be mined from the basic edit data points. It is better not to conflate the two because the latter one has clearer social contract (submit this and you agree these). The two may be converging because of the technological tools we may have as researchers, or the next Talk page system, or the some metric systems to measure content and/or users. Such converging only demonstrates the increasing complexity of the data eco-system but does not grant us the leisure of conceptual conflation.

What does the action of hitting the edit/submit button entail for data governance? Some how I still think a distinction does exist between the edit data and the other contextual data (time stamps, ids, etc.) and derived meta data.



2014-09-04 23:07 GMT+02:00 Brian Keegan <b.keegan@neu.edu>:
Also some coverage here in the Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/09/science-web


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:32 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:

Has this been considered?  It seems to apply to us in many ways.

http://news.yahoo.com/course-reddit-imgur-named-research-institute-derp-142950548.html


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--
Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Lazer Lab
College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University
Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University
Affiliate, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School

Skype: bckeegan

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