This an interesting clarification. I support framing RCOM's mission as educational (teaching researchers about best practices), and even more so clearly stating that its procedures are voluntary. In other words, such a body should have an uncontroversial consultative/advisory role, rather then be a gatekeeper of sorts. That said, I don't know if we need a "body" at all. Why couldn't all of this be done under existing community auspices such as WikiProject Research?

I still think our priority should be to redesign our research pages, create a proper research portal with best practices (and hopefully some carrot-like tools that help researchers, from certificates to how-tos for grants/data to research tools) that we could then advertise among most Wikipedia researchers.

IMHO one of RCOM's biggest fallacies was (is...) trying to frame itself as a gatekeeper then a facilitator.

--

Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus

On 7/29/2014 22:42, Aaron Halfaker wrote:

I don't believe there is any claim of authority for RCOM. At least I was not involved in making claims that it is required and I do not see it as such. In fact, I have argued in the past that studies run by Wikipedians won't gain much from the process[1]. However, I do recommend that academics -- especially those who do not otherwise engage with Wikipedians -- to work with an RCOM member to coordinate a review in order to ensure that you won't see massive push-back when you start recruiting on Wikipedia -- as studies tended to see when they were run before the process.

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IEG/Reimagining_Wikipedia_Mentorship#English_Wikipedia_AGAIN

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 8:35 AM, Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Aaron, what's the source of authority for RCOM (or its members acting independently) to perform a review procedure and claim it is required?

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker@gmail.com> wrote:

Re. RCOM and review processes, these are two different things. RCOM is an old, defunct WMF sanctioned working group of staff, researchers and Wikipedians. If we want to revive RCOM, it seems like this should be discussed in another thread.

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