On Nov 24, 2012, at 3:57 PM, Han-Teng Liao wrote:
As a researcher I really like the first three items.
I am not sure about the third one. Is it designed to connect this
track with the Wikipedia Track, and/or in relation to other tracks?
This one? "What are the methodological challenges to studying Wikipedia? How are researchers engaging with innovative methodologies to solve some of these problems? How are other researchers using traditional or well-established methods to study Wikipedia?"
This *is* the Wikipedia Track :) So not sure what you mean when you say 'connect this track with the Wikipedia Track' (it is confusing, I know!)
Mark and I thought it would be really useful to have people write and talk about their methods when studying Wikipedia - especially since it is such an interdisciplinary field.
The fifth item seems a bit general.
Yes, I think Mark can pitch in here but we thought that it would be good to link Wikipedia research back to social theory because that is sometimes lacking in the research. But perhaps we should tighten it up a bit?
Yes, thank you! Interesting that they have an 'academic track' this year...
I would guess that since Wikipedia projects are increasingly organized
and expanded, various cultural and educational activities have been
happening (or about to happen) in a more organized way by various
actors, such as local chapters, partners of Cultural and Education
Outreach programs and GLAM – galleries, libraries, archives and
museums – institutions. It might be a good idea to frame this sort of
civic- or digital- literacy efforts, under/over a loftier UN-like
Human Development agenda (and more interestingly I believe, data!)
Sounds interesting but not sure I understand the suggestion? If you're suggesting we frame another research area/question around how institutions are interacting with Wikipedia, then I think that's a great idea!
Finally, just a gap I sense is worth covering. I see there are efforts
to use Wikipedia simply as big data for research in different domains,
treating it as big language corpus, sentiment databases, business
intelligence, visualization, etc. Sometimes such discipline-specific
research does not overlap much and/or does not show up in wikisym or
wikimania. Still, because of the fact they all approach Wikipedia for
data, it may be a good idea to grow a platform where researchers can
share various ways and experiences dealing with the big data
Wikipedia.
Yes, good idea! I'm thinking that we should fit this into the methods area....
I personally believe that a research ecology around the
Wikipedia the big data may be emerging, if the relevant data, tools
and crafts begin to grow around Wikipedia. I agree with Heather that
we may have too much big data analysis on the English version of
Wikipedia (wink wink), but it may be relevant to use this opportunity
to document, or even conduct ethnography work on various human efforts
trying to use various tools of "big data" to (mis-)read/use/exploit
Wikipedia differently.
I totally agree (as you might have guessed ;)