This was in the recent Research Newsletter:
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/127472/1/847290360.pdf
They found a correlation between the length of articles about tourist destinations and the number of tourists visiting them. They tried to influence other destinations by adding content and did not find a correlation in the subsequent number of tourists, suggesting that the causation flows from tourism to article length instead.
But I was taken aback by the last line of their paper, "using the suggested research design to study other areas of information acquisition, such as medicine or school choices could be fruitful directions."
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 12:52 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
How about contacting the authors directly and asking them if they have considered the potential ethical challenges of extending the research to the two areas they've mentioned in the paper? Their response may be as simple as: sure, and we are aware of it. If they're not aware of it, your note can help them think about it.
Best, Leila
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I can understand the hypothesis whether longer school articles would attract more enrolments, but I am a bit bemused about the medical hypothesis whether longer articles about a disease would cause more people to have it or at least be diagnosed with it. What exactly is the medical hypothesis here? Is it relating to treatment articles or drug articles?
As for the ethics, if the information added to an article (school or medical) seeks to be accurate and satisfies the normal requirements (citations, NPOV, NOR, COI, etc), so what? Does it matter if it's done by a research project or done by anybody else? Do we know who did every edit on those articles currently or why?
It's pretty clearly an ethical problem to add incorrect information. I can see a possible ethical issue if one article was updated with good quality contributions and another was done in a deliberately sloppy way, to test a difference.
Kerry
Sent from my iPad
On 29 May 2017, at 6:00 pm, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 12:52 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
How about contacting the authors directly and asking them if they have considered the potential ethical challenges of extending the research to the two areas they've mentioned in the paper? Their response may be as simple as: sure, and we are aware of it. If they're not aware of it, your note can help them think about it.
Best, Leila
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
A followup by the same authors reviewed in today's Signpost reverses their opinion on causality, asserting that I improvements to articles about places increases tourism:
http://marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf
On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 3:52 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
This was in the recent Research Newsletter:
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/127472/1/847290360.pdf
They found a correlation between the length of articles about tourist destinations and the number of tourists visiting them. They tried to influence other destinations by adding content and did not find a correlation in the subsequent number of tourists, suggesting that the causation flows from tourism to article length instead.
But I was taken aback by the last line of their paper, "using the suggested research design to study other areas of information acquisition, such as medicine or school choices could be fruitful directions."
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
Is there any other research studying whether editing wikipedia(s) produces real-world changes?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 6:10 PM Subject: Re: research trying to influence real-world outcomes by editing Wikipedia To: "wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
A followup by the same authors reviewed in today's Signpost reverses their opinion on causality, asserting that I improvements to articles about places increases tourism:
http://marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf
On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 3:52 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
This was in the recent Research Newsletter:
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/127472/1/847290360.pdf
They found a correlation between the length of articles about tourist destinations and the number of tourists visiting them. They tried to influence other destinations by adding content and did not find a correlation in the subsequent number of tourists, suggesting that the causation flows from tourism to article length instead.
But I was taken aback by the last line of their paper, "using the suggested research design to study other areas of information acquisition, such as medicine or school choices could be fruitful directions."
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
Hoi, There was a recent blogpost where a company used Wikidata to combine data from multiple sources to provide information to people listening to music. I know it is not Wikipedia but Wikipedia information is provided as a result. Thanks, GerardM
On 26 July 2017 at 09:23, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Is there any other research studying whether editing wikipedia(s) produces real-world changes?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 6:10 PM Subject: Re: research trying to influence real-world outcomes by editing Wikipedia To: "wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org" <wiki-research-l@lists. wikimedia.org>
A followup by the same authors reviewed in today's Signpost reverses their opinion on causality, asserting that I improvements to articles about places increases tourism:
http://marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf
On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 3:52 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
This was in the recent Research Newsletter:
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/127472/1/847290360.pdf
They found a correlation between the length of articles about tourist destinations and the number of tourists visiting them. They tried to influence other destinations by adding content and did not find a correlation in the subsequent number of tourists, suggesting that the causation flows from tourism to article length instead.
But I was taken aback by the last line of their paper, "using the suggested research design to study other areas of information acquisition, such as medicine or school choices could be fruitful directions."
Are there any ethical guidelines concerning whether this is reasonable? Should there be?
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wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org