TL;DR: Come do wiki research with us! Newbie, seasoned vet or Wikipedian -- all are welcome. August. 6th & 7th. Overlaps with the Wikimania'14 Hackathon. Global event that includes virtual and local meetup groups in major cities. [ sign up ]
Wikis work in practice, but not in Theory. Let's change that.The Wiki Research Hackathon is an opportunity for anyone interested in research on wikis, Wikipedia, and other open collaborations to meet, share ideas, and work together. It's being organized by researchers in academia and the Wikimedia Foundation, but we want anyone interested in research to participate. Whether or not you consider yourself a researcher, or would ever want to be one, come with questions, answers, data, code, crazy ideas... or just your insatiable curiosity.
We will meet both virtually via google hangout and locally for those who are able to attend local meetup groups. You can take part through a persistent google hangout and IRC channel (#wikimedia-research) throughout the day, even if there is no local meetup in your neck of the world.
Who can participate?Everyone who is interested is welcome to participate. You don't have to be a researcher or a programmer to get involved. We need your ideas, your questions, and your insights into how wikis work, where wiki-work breaks down and how things can be helped. Just find a meetup group (local or virtual) that works for you and add your name to the list of attendees.
[ sign up ]
How will we meet?In order to be inclusive as possible, we'll be organizing both local and virtual meetups. Local meetups are organized by Wikipedians all over the world. Anyone is welcome to become a local host. We currently have local meetups confirmed for London UK & San Francisco, CA.
Hosts will be responsible for determining how they'll organize their own events and how they'll synchronize with others. It's generally recommended that hosts organize their events around the global synchronization periods described below, but that may be impractical in certain circumstances. Check with your host about how he/she plans to hand synchronization.
When will it happen?
It turns out that "When will it happen?" is a complicated question. Since this hackathon is a global event, participants will be joining all over the world, and due to the way that global time (and thus timezones) works, many of us will be awake while others are sleeping.
In order to deal with pain due to timezones, local and virtual meetups will be synchronized in sync groups based on similar timezones within the Americas, Europe/Africa and Asia/Oceania. These groups share at least an hour of overlap with nearby group(s). Meetup hosts can take advantage of these overlapping periods to share ideas and results with neighboring sync groups. If you are participating virtually, you are welcome to join whichever local meetup(s) and synchronization groups fit your location/schedule best.
[ time table ]What will we do?The Wiki Research Hackathon is an opportunity for anyone interested in research on wikis, Wikipedia, and open collaboration to meet, share ideas, and work together. It is targeted at Wikimedians, students, researchers, coders and anyone interested in crunching and visualizing data, designing new tools, and producing new knowledge about Wikimedia projects and their communities.
The goal of this event is to:
- share knowledge about research tools and datasets (and how to use them)
- ask burning research questions (and learn how to answer them)
- get involved in ongoing research projects (or start new ones)
- design new data-driven apps and tools (or hack existing ones)
Why are we doing this?
The scholarly research community studying Wikimedia projects, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Wikimedia community all have a shared interest in answering research questions about Wikimedia projects using public datasets, developing new tools and sharing their work with others. Let's get together and support each other's work!
-Aaron