Hi Kiril,
I'd like to ask for further clarification on a couple of points.
Some people may be risk averse to performing certain actions, such as moving pages, because they don't know what the rules are regarding those actions, but page moves aren't necessarily harmful for the environment. Does your research account for situations like this?
I'm still having difficulty understanding how the community may benefit from the proposed research. Suppose that your research is highly successful according to your definition of success. What will the community gain from this?
Based on the use of the word "experiment", I'm assuming that you're proposing an active intervention of some type in the community, and as Jonathan said, it would be good to have more information regarding what you have in mind.
Hi Jonathan,
My questions are largely based on Kiril's use of the word "experiment", but I appreciate the request for clarification.
Regarding "Finally, we the members of this list (whether volunteers or WMF staff) are not peer reviewers, do not speak for the Wikipedia community, and are not empowered to approve or deny research requests.", I partly agree and partly disagree. This list isn't a peer review committee in the standard Western academic sense, but I think that people who are planning to do interventions in the course of their research in the Wikiverse would do well to consult this list for advice. Also, the community may, by consensus, place various restrictions on research projects, both broadly by policy and more narrowly regarding specific experiments or specific researchers; we probably would do that on wiki, but by seeking advice here, researchers are likely to get useful advice regarding what to do and what not to do. Also, some researchers may want to make requests for WMF funding, WMF staff time, and/or access to users' private data, and the people on this list might be good to consult before WMF grants any of those, especially in novel or borderline situations.
Thanks, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )