Hi Pine,
The findings from the research will be articulated to draw clear conclusions about what causes utility and disutility from participation, and how this is perceived by different editors. For instance, it is natural to assume that editors come to contribute by adding content that will remain visible, while blocks and reverted edits are risk factors that drive them away, although different editors have different levels of risk aversion. Similarly to any other research, the benefit for the community and individual editors is going to be indirect but yet not insignificant to be accepted in the future process of decision-making (if the research demonstrates the existence of high level of risk aversion towards something, then it automatically signals that doing that thing is harmful for the environment).
I know that it's impossible to predict the extent to which this research would make impact because the body of literature is very poor on volunteer-driven environments in a dynamic setting but it's definitely worth to start off something that might attract the attention of researchers in this direction. At the end, the research is not meant to carve rules in stone that any single editor should respect but rather to suggest something that individuals and communities might find useful (the means of doing this will definitely not turn Wikipedia into a laboratory or put someone's privacy in danger).
Best, Kiril
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 9:43 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Kiril,
Thank you for sharing your proposal.
I am concerned about the possibility of Wikipedia being used as a laboratory for experiments that consume volunteers' time and/or personal data, and don't benefit Wikipedia or its participants. Does your research benefit the community, and if so, how? It sounds like your research intends to develop a model of decision trees for individual Wikipedians, and at first read I don't understand how the individual research subjects or the community would benefit.
Sorry if this sounds defensive, but I hope that you understand why I'm asking.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 6:00 PM Kiril Simeonovski kiril.simeonovski@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I am currently working on a research concerned with modelling user behaviour on Wikipedia. The idea is to design a field experiment over a random sample of Wikipedians in order to examine their risk preferences
and
define (dis)utilities that will be used in a utility-maximisation model.
I have already submitted an abstract that got accepted for the biennial Foundations of Utility and Risk Conference 2020 https://www.furconference.org/
and my
future plans include presentation of the concept at other research conferences (including Wikimania 2020).
You can visit the project page <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Modelling_Behaviour_in_a_Peer_Produ...
of this research on Meta. Your questions and comments are welcome at any time. Thank you!
Best regards, Kiril _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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