Erik & I had a good meeting last week with the MacArthur Foundation, who reiterated their interest in funding research related to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. Their primary interest is in developing a better understanding of the Wikipedia audience (readers), but I believe they are potentially interested in research into the contributor community as well.

Our research goals & interests are laid out here

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Research_Goals

It's a pretty full list, but not an exhaustive one. We'd encourage anyone who wants to conduct research into the Wikimedia projects to approach MacArthur for funding, and/or talk to us.

Thanks, Sue

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Fwd: RfC: Wikimedia Foundation Research Goals Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 16:03:41 -0700 From: Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org References: b80736c80804071602t14d55745v4c34be87e347cb25@mail.gmail.com

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org Date: Apr 7, 2008 4:02 PM Subject: RfC: Wikimedia Foundation Research Goals To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Sue & I have drafted a set of research goals that the Wikimedia Foundation supports. The purpose of the document is to have something we can point researchers, universities, foundations, and other third parties to when they ask us: So, what kind of research are you interested in? Will you support/endorse my research proposal X? In most cases, we will not actively pursue these goals directly -- we'll just try to facilitate & endorse research by third parties.

These research goals need to line up with our overall organizational goals to make sense, so we've tried to map research goals to organizational goals.

In light of this constraint, please do feel free to make revisions, or to suggest changes on the discussion page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Research_Goals

It's still a draft looked at by only two people - so we do expect it to be incomplete. :-)

(BTW - I'm aware that some chapters are pursuing a research agenda on their own: This is great, and these Foundation goals are in no way meant to be prescriptive for chapters.)

-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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