Hello all,
This is sort of related to the previous thread on consent, and is
something that's been on my mind for a while.
As someone who is reasonably visible in the wiki research community
and Wikipedia, I get asked fairly often to either a) help recruit
participants for studies of Wikipedia, or b) participate myself in
such studies.
The common theme of such requests is often:
* The researcher wants to find people who are invested in Wikipedia,
for qualitative studies of contributors
* The researcher does not know how to go about doing this
* What "invested" means is often poorly defined, since the researcher
is often trying to figure out what participation looks like more
generally
* The researcher has done the standard things (posted on the mailing
list, on the village pump) and hasn't gotten any results; or has
semi-randomly posted on people's talk pages, potentially getting a
warning about spamming in the process
As a result:
* many of the same people (i.e. very visible contributors) keep
getting asked to participate in different studies; or
* the researcher is left with a self-selected group of people from the
mailing lists or other places, which may in no way represent 'the
community' (my hypothesis is that we have many small communities,
working under the greater umbrella of Wikipedia); and who may be
people who are particularly outspoken or disgruntled; or
* the researcher does not get enough participants to do a good study
So:
* Is there a good solution for these problems?
* Can we come up with "best practices" or advice for people who are
trying to recruit Wikipedians for studies?
* What about some sort of infrastructure or wikiproject to support
these requests? Every time I get one of these emails I would really
like to pass it on to a group of people to deal with, but I am not
sure who, and this mailing list seems too small and focused to support
such requests.
best,
Phoebe
p.s. I think "any wiki with a large base of contributors" could be
substituted for "Wikipedia" here -- this is probably a problem with
studying any large community-run site. But most of my requests have
come from people specifically interested in Wikipedia.
- phoebe s. ayers | phoebe.ayers(a)gmail.com