Hi all,
I am a bit late in the game, but since so many questions were raised
about RCom, its scope, its goals, the source of its authority etc. and
I helped coordinate it in the early days I thought I’d chime in to
clear some confusion.
*Is RCom an official WMF body or a group of volunteers?*
RCom was created as a volunteer body to help design policies and best
practices around research on Wikimedia projects. People who joined the
committee did so on a volunteer basis and with a variety of interests
by responding to a call for participation issued by WMF. Despite the
fact that the original initiative came from WMF, its membership almost
entirely consisted of non-WMF researchers and community members (those
of us who are now with Wikimedia had no affiliation with the
Foundation when RCom was launched [1]). RCom work was and remains 100%
volunteer-driven, even for those of us who are full-time employees of
the Foundation.
*Is RCom a body regulating subject recruitment?*
No, subject recruitment was only one among many areas of interest
identified by its participants [2]
*Is RCom still alive?*
RCom stopped working a while ago/as a/ /group meeting on a regular
basis to discuss joint initiatives/. However, it spawned a large
number of initiatives and workgroups that are still alive and kicking,
some of which have evolved into other projects that are now only
loosely associated with RCom. These include reviewing subject
recruitment requests, but also the Research Newsletter, which has been
published monthly for the last 3 years; countless initiatives in the
area of open access; initiatives to facilitate Wikimedia data
documentation and data discoverability; hackathons and outreach events
aimed at bringing together researchers and Wikimedia contributors.
Subject recruitment reviews and discussions are still happening, and I
believe they provide a valuable service when you consider that they
are entirely run by a microscopic number of volunteers. I don’t think
that the alternative between “either RCom exists and it functions
effectively or reviews should immediately stop” is well framed or even
desirable, for the reasons that I explain below.
*What’s the source of RCom’s authority in reviewing subject
recruitment requests?*
Despite the perception that one of RCom’s duties would be to provide
formal approval for research projects, it was never designed to do so
and it never had the power to enforce formal review decisions.
Instead, it was offered as a volunteer support service in an effort to
help minimize disruption, improve the relevance of research involving
Wikimedia contributors, sanity check the credentials of the
researchers, create collaborations between researchers working on the
same topic. The lack of community or WMF policies to back subject
recruitment caused in the past few years quite some headaches,
particularly in those cases in which recruitment attempts were blocked
and referred to the RCom in order to “obtain formal approval”. The
review process itself was meant to be as inclusive as possible and not
restricted to RCom participants and researchers having their proposal
reviewed were explicitly invited to address any questions or concerns
raised by community members on the talk page. I totally agree that the
way in which the project templates and forms were designed needs some
serious overhaul to remove any indication of a binding review process
or a commitment for reviews to be delivered within a fixed time frame.
I cannot think of any example in which the review process
discriminated some type of projects (say qualitative research) in
favor of other types of research, but I am sure different research
proposals attracted different levels of participation and interest in
the review process. My recommendation to anyone interested in
designing future subject recruitment processes is to focus on a
lightweight review process open to the largest possible number of
community members but backed by transparent and /enforceable/
policies. It’s a really hard problem and there is simply no obvious
silver bullet solution that can be found without some experimentation
and fault tolerance.
*What about requests for **private data**?*
Private data and technical support requests from WMF are a different
story: they were folded into the list of frequently asked questions
hosted on the RCom section of Meta, but by definition they require a
direct and substantial involvement from the Foundation: (1) they
involve WMF as the legal entity that would be held liable for
disclosing data in breech of its privacy policies and (2) they involve
paid staff resources and need to be prioritized against a lot of other
requests. There are now dedicated sections on private data on the
Wikimedia Privacy Policy [4] and Data Retention guidelines [5]. Many
people, including myself and other members of the Foundation’s
Analytics team, believe that we should try and collect the minimum
amount of private data that we need in order to operate and study our
projects and make all those types of aggregate/sanitized data that we
can retain indefinitely publicly available to everyone under open
licenses. We’ve already started a process to do so and to ensure that
more data (for example, data collected via site instrumentation [6])
be exposed via Labs or other APIs, in the respect of our users’ privacy.
*How can we incentivize researchers to “give back” to the community?*
In the early days we drafted a set of requirements [3] to make sure we
could get back as much as possible from research involving WMF
resources. It’s been hard to implement these requirements without
policies to enforce them. The suggestion of having more researchers
apply for a slot at the Research Showcase to present their work is an
excellent idea that we should consider. In general, the Research team
at WMF is always interested in hearing about incentives to drive more
interest towards actionable research on Wikimedia projects.
Dario
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Committee&oldid=2…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WMF_support
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines
[6]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Schemas
On Jul 29, 2014, at 6:49 PM, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com
<mailto:aaron.halfaker@gmail.com>> wrote:
Either [RCOM is] functioning or its not,
surely?
Well, I explained that there are functioning sub-committees still.
In other words, there are initiatives that RCOM started that are
alive and successful, but we no longer coordinate as a larger group.
I don't know how else to explain it. I guess you could say that
RCOM is still functioning and that we no longer require/engage in
group meetings.
As Kerry noted earlier on, the policy as it stands [1] says that
researchers "must" obtain approval through the process described.
If the wording now needs to be changed to "ought to" then surely
this requires more consensus than your single message here?
That's a proposed policy. Until it is passed by consensus, the
"must" is a proposed term. I think that it should be "must", but
until that consensus is reached, I'll continue to say that it "ought
to".
Regarding researchers stating what should be regulated, I think there
is a big difference between *deciding what should be regulated* and
*being involved in the discussion of *how* it should be regulated*.
Hence why I welcome participation. What I'm saying is that you have
a vested interest in not being regulated, but I'd still like to
discuss how your activities can be regulated effectively &
efficiently. Does that make sense?
b) Pine suggested a board decision on this earlier one to obtain
clarity and I supported this but it was met with silence, which
is why I followed up.
I welcome you to raise it to them. I don't think it is worth their
time, but they might disagree.
But what is clear is that clarification is required - especially
on the distribution of tasks between Foundation employees, the
research community and Wikimedia editors. And this is
*especially* true for people outside this list.
I think that the proposed policy on English Wikipedia does that quite
well. That's why I directed people there. Also, again, I am not
working on RCOM or subject recruitment as a WMF employee. I do this
in my volunteer time. This is true of all of RCOM who happen to also
be staff.
if you want process to be more clearly documented, you also have to
address people like Poitr who would rather not have processes
described in detail. When you guys work out how clearly you want a
process to be described, please let me know. I'm tired of
re-spec'ing processes. This is the third iteration.
If the policy is incorrectly described on the policy pages, then
someone from RCom (or whatever it is now called) should be the
one to change this - preferably with some discussion.
Heather, that is a *proposed *policy page on English Wikipedia. It
is not part of RCOM. It would render RCOM irrelevant for subject
recruitment concerns. That's why I started it. I don't think that
RCOM/WMF/researchers should own subject recruitment review. I think
the community being studied should own it and that
RCOM/WMF/researchers should participate.
Also, I am not your employee. This is my volunteer time. I don't
have much of it, so I focus on keeping the system running -- and it
is -- and improving the system -- which is the proposal I linked to.
If you want something done and other volunteers don't have time to
do it. Do it yourself. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOFIXIT>
-Aaron
On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa(a)gmail.com
<mailto:hfordsa@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Aaron Halfaker
<aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com <mailto:aaron.halfaker@gmail.com>>
wrote:
RCOM is not functioning as a complete group anymore.
I'm a little confused why this wasn't made clear right at the
beginning of this thread e.g. when others suggested this might be
the case and you refuted them? Also, I'm not sure what
'functioning as a complete group' actually means. Either its
functioning or its not, surely?
However, we split into sub-committees while we were still
a functioning group. The subject recruitment
sub-committee and newsletter sub-committees are
performing vital functions still.
I never stated that research recruiting needs RCOM
approval. I definitely said that it "ought to" have RCOM
approval.
So, does that mean that is what the policy *ought to* be now? And
do you believe that this should this be the way that the policy
gets decided? Because it isn't right now as far as I can see. As
Kerry noted earlier on, the policy as it stands [1] says that
researchers "must" obtain approval through the process described.
If the wording now needs to be changed to "ought to" then surely
this requires more consensus than your single message here?
re. the comment that I (and the other researchers?) on this list
shouldn't be the ones to decide what the regulation should be, I
disagree on two counts. a) It seems on the one hand that you want
this to be "self-regulation" i.e. you invited researchers on this
list to join R-COM at the beginning of this thread, but that you
don't think that the researchers here should be able to determine
what to regulate. I know that you're looking for an inclusive
process but you can't have it both ways: if we are going to help
regulate, then we need to at least help decide how to regulate.
b) Pine suggested a board decision on this earlier one to obtain
clarity and I supported this but it was met with silence, which
is why I followed up.
There are also more than two "review coordinators" (not
not "reviewers") -- it's just that DarTar and I have
accepted the burden of distributing work. When people
are busy, we often coordinate the reviews ourselves.
I can understand your frustration; I really can! I know that
you've done a lot of really great, prior work on this and I don't
think any of us are saying that we need to throw the baby out
with the bathwater. But what is clear is that clarification is
required - especially on the distribution of tasks between
Foundation employees, the research community and Wikimedia
editors. And this is *especially* true for people outside this list.
I welcome your edits to make it clear that review is
optional. As you might imagine, I have plenty of work to
do and I appreciate your good-faith collaboration on
improving our research documentation.
I'm frustrated by this response. If the policy is incorrectly
described on the policy pages, then someone from RCom (or
whatever it is now called) should be the one to change this -
preferably with some discussion. I find it frustrating that WMF
employees are often the ones who make the final policy
pronouncements but then tell others to implement it. And if we
don't do the work, then we're apparently not assuming good faith.
This is a great opportunity to rejuvenate the process; hopefully
it will eventually be seen that way :)
Best,
Heather.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
-Aaron
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