Hey all,
James: I made the edit stating the research should get approval, and I did that by jumping into the game and just making the edit based on what I read in discussion boards. I did not consider it to be a new requirement as you called it. On the talk page I proposed a kind of approval - actually it is what Dario is calling "flagging", meaning that someone checks to see that the researcher has submitted requested information but does not check to see whether the information meets any criteria.
I think flagging is a good idea to make sure that researchers meet minimum disclosure requirements, and I would be happy to be one of the reviewers of research in this way. I trust that it would be noncontroversial just to ask researchers to complete a form and then check to see if it is completed; surely any other review system would start with that step, right?
Jodi: Most researchers do not know about research submission for approval on Wikipedia, but I think if we had a landing page with instructions then the community would become aware of it and start directing researchers to it. Researchers know that they are supposed to seek community approval before doing work.
Is such a flagging system already in place? If not, shall we start one?
This is what I imagine is what we have consensus to do - is this how it is supposed to work?
- Researcher jumps on Wikipedia unannounced and starts recruiting for surveys
- Some Wikipedian tells the researcher to submit their project for review
- Researcher goes to landing page and completes a form for their proposal
- The proposal is posted publicly
- Any volunteer can check the proposal to see if all fields are completed
- Volunteers tag the form as being completed or incomplete - no quality review
- Completed forms eventually get reviewed by RCom according to criteria which are currently undefined
- Approved projects get a template to stick on their project page.
- Researchers must show their research page to all research recruitment candidates, who would be able to see the completed form, the flagging by a volunteer, and the approval by RCom. The approval template would also link to more information about research on Wikipedia.
- Research subjects would only be able to agree to participate in research by following instructions at the bottom of the research description form, so they would see default notices like "unflagged" or "unreviewed" if no one has checked it.