Does anyone know whether this is actually a problem with editors these days?

Yes.  We regularly see requests to survey the most active Wikipedians about their motivations to edit.  These requests are problematic for some very obvious reasons.  See this proposal[1] for an example of a study that was halted in review due to the disruption it would have caused.

The projects I do as a qualitative researcher tend to be exploratory. I will interview people on skype, for example, about their work on particular articles before I know that I have a project.
  
Do you document your study on wiki and ask for feedback about disruption before moving forward?  Regardless of the process around it, I think we might all agree that is good behavior for any research activity.  This might be obvious to you as someone who has been doing ethnographic work in Wikimedia communities for a long time, but it is apprently less obvious to more junior wiki researchers.   

This good-faith documentation and discussion describes the whole RCom subject recruitment process.  You refer to RCom as "heavy weight", but as far as I can tell, the weight is entirely on the RCom coordinator -- a burden I'll gladly accept to help good research take place without disruption.  Researchers should have already documented their research and prepared themselves to discuss the work with their subjects before they arrive. 

I don't know of a single study that has passed stalled in RCom's process that has resulted in substantial disruption or stalled for more than two weeks.  I welcome you to provide counter examples.  

I don't think [the CSCW workshop proposal] addresses the issue unless there's something I'm missing (like an invitation, for example!

One of the ways that researchers can be supported is through groups that help them socialize their research activities with community members (and minimize disruption for community members).  Despite the tone of this conversation, we have been highly successful in this regard.  

I think it would be nice if you could offer an invitation to the researchers on this list

That's the plan.  We're just getting to a point where we have a solid idea of what we want to accomplish.  An announcement will come soon.  

Basically, I think that we need to reassess what kinds of problems are the most important ones right now that we want to solve rather than resuscitating a process that was designed to address a specific type of problem that was prevalent a long time ago

As I pointed out previously, the subject recruitment process is alive and does not need to be "resuscitated ".  It is also solving a relevant problem.  I welcome Lane Rasberry (if he has time) to share his substantial concerns about undocumented, undiscussed research taking place on-wiki.  

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_knowledge_sharing
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncategorized_support_requests

-Aaron 


On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa@gmail.com> wrote:

On 17 July 2014 22:37, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan@wikimedia.org> wrote:

First, I wanted to highlight the important issue that Heather raises here, because although it's a separate issue, it's an important one:

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa@gmail.com> wrote:
...


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?

As a community-run group, RCOM doesn't have any role in making non-public data available to researchers. However, Aaron and I are putting together a proposal for a workshop that would address issues like this. That's work we're doing in an official capacity, as opposed to the RCOM work, which is volunteer.

Jonathan, it looks like this will be a great workshop and I think CSCW is a great venue! but I don't think it addresses the issue unless there's something I'm missing (like an invitation, for example! ;) I see that the workshop is forward-facing but its aim seems to be to work with a bunch of different communities like Reddit and GalaxyZoo. What we need are better channels as Wikipedia researchers to communicate our needs as researchers operating outside the WMF. And preferably in a way that doesn't require us to have to travel to Canada to a workshop to do it!

And, I offered it as a joke but it reminds me of a small, subtle point, I think it would be nice if you could offer an invitation to the researchers on this list to join the workshop and/or workshop planning when you advertise the work you're doing on this. I know it's a wiki and anyone could probably join, but I feel like there is enormous possibility for the group represented here to feel involved and recognised, and I, for one, would like to be invited sometimes.. to the fun stuff, that is, not just the hard, arduous stuff :) 

Best,
Heather.

 

On RCOM more generally... I think clarifying the role of the committee, and getting a larger and more diverse set of people involved, might help make RCOM work. But as Aaron can attest, it is difficult to get people to agree on what RCOMs role should be, let alone get them to work for RCOM.

I've been involved with RCOM for a while, albeit not very actively. Unfortunately, I think that the fact that the only people who "review" requests happen to be* WMF staffers contributes to confusion about RCOM's role and it's authority. IMO, if RCOM or any other subject recruitment review process is to succeed, we need:
  • more wiki-researchers who are willing to regularly participate in both peer review and in developing better process guidelines and standards (it's really just Aaron right now)
  • more Wikipedians who are willing to do the same
  • some degree of buy-in from the Wikimedia community as a whole. RCOM needs legitimacy. But where, and from whom? Subject recruitment is a global concern, but the proposed subject recruitment process is focused on en-wiki (mostly because that's where most of the relevant research activities that we are aware of are happening). How to make RCOM more global?
RCOM is in a tough spot right now. We can't force researchers to submit their proposals, or abide by the suggestions/recommendations/decisions/whatever that result from their review. But because we look like an official body, it's easy to blame us for failing to prevent disruptive research (if you're a community member), for "rubber stamping" research that we like (ditto), or for drowning research in red tape (if you're a wiki-researcher). 


- J

*we were wiki-researchers first!


 


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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Wikimedia Foundation


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