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 )