Re: [Foundation-l] Dario Taraborelli joins Wikimedia Foundation

Dear all, it is my pleasure to announce that Dario Taraborelli (User:DarTar) is joining the Wikimedia Foundation as Senior Research Analyst, Strategy, reporting to me. As of this week, Dario is based in San Francisco, having relocated from the UK. Dario joins Howie Fung and me as part of the Wikimedia Foundation Strategy Team. Our job is to advance Wikimedia's strategic thinking on an ongoing basis, and to help organize relevant research and analytics. Dario most recently was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey in the UK. Previously he was Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University College London. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, an MSc in Cognitive Science, and an MA in Philosophy of Science. He has taught at various universities, including Sciences Po in Paris, Université Paris 7, and École Normale Supérieure. He has served as advisor and editor for numerous scientific publications, organizations and conferences. Notably, Dario has participated in wiki-related research and development since 2004. He is lead developer of WikkaWiki, an open source wiki engine; developer of WikiTracer, a prototype toolkit for wiki analytics; and founder and developer of ReaderMeter, a mashup visualizing readership of scholarly publications. He has led or participated in many other projects relevant to wikis and social media. See http://nitens.org/taraborelli/research for a list of his research projects and publications. Dario has supported the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor since December 2010. Since then he has worked on a number of projects for us, including: - Analysis of data from the pilot of the Article Feedback Tool. You can see his initial findings here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/February… - Organizing meetings and priorities of the Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee. See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee - With Daniel Mietchen and Giota Alevizou (members of RCom), organizing a survey of expert participation in Wikipedia projects. See: http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693 - In collaboration with Moritz Stefaner and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, an analysis and visualization of AfD discussions in the English Wikipedia: http://notabilia.net I'm very excited to have Dario on our team. He and his family are still settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dario's official start date is April 18. Please join me in welcoming him! All best, Erik