On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Aaron Halfaker half0032@umn.edu wrote:
Hello,
I am re-posting here because I thought people might be interested in a proposal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Wikipedia_re... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Wikipedia_research_review) that my lab-mates and I have been working on. The gestalt of the proposal is that Wikipedia needs a review system to both protect itself from questionable research activities and to allow good research to take place within the system. Currently research involving anything other than the database snapshots is difficult because there is no formal policy related to research within Wikipedia.
Could you explain a little more what's the exact problem you want to solve?
I followed the links to individual studies, but I only understood the 2nd one about an interface modification. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikipedia_in... )
It sounds like there were two problems here: (1) you didn't explain what your software was -- people wanted assurance that the thing was safe and the like; and (2) people weren't persuaded that participating in the study was worth their time.
I don't understand why having an IRB-like committee will help solve things. In the academic setting, IRB's are good, or at least important, because they try to stop unethical research that harms the overall research community (or at the very least exposes the sponsoring university to lawsuits).
It's not clear to me why Wikipedia research's relationship to Wikipedians is analogous. The bigger problem seems to be persuading people they should participate in the study. Having approval of a committee might have helped a little bit for the first objection you had -- that they have no idea what the software was -- but it wouldn't have helped with the second -- that they didn't think it was worth participating in.
-- Brendan O'Connor - http://anyall.org
See failed examples of attempted research here:
- Failed mentoring study:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
- Failed interface launch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Wikipedia_in...
-Aaron Halfaker GroupLens Research University of Minnesota
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