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?

Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are any plans for RCOM that have been made by the research team and the only people who can answer that are folks in the research team :)

Best,

Heather.

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.

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!

Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme
EthnographyMatters | Oxford Digital Ethnography Group
http://hblog.org | @hfordsa

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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