Hello,
At Wikimania in London August 6-7 there is a research meetup. Some RCOM people will be there. < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Labs2/Hackathons/August_6-7th,_2014
I will be there all Thursday 7 August. Research ethics oversight is not the priority for this group and statistics seems to be, but at least I want to visit this group and see what they think.
I support Aaron and RCOM, and would prefer that no one blame either for anything. I think both are being held responsible for a lot of complicated issues that are beyond the scope of what they are empowered to cover. RCOM has some strengths and weaknesses. I wish to empower the Research Committee and make it known for its strengths, and to help it divest responsibilities for areas which it cannot manage as well and find other channels for dealing with whatever RCOM is unable to do.
Nathan, I would be willing to talk with you by phone or video sometime if you like. It is not that I want to make this private, but just that text and email are not the same as conversations with voice. I have no solutions, but at least I might be able to describe the positions of stakeholders in research, list options, and say something about what kinds of actions would be conservative and what would be radical. I wish for a bit more community participation in research oversight, but overall, I want to reduce bureaucracy and gatekeeping, and I think others may wish for this as well. Researchers are awesome and they need support.
yours,
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 11:03 AM, Aaron Halfaker ahalfaker@wikimedia.org wrote:
Nathan,
I plan to address those concerns on the appropriate list. It's a public list. I'm drafting an email at the moment. If you're interested in wiki research, I encourage you to sign up to wiki-research-l. It's relatively low traffic for anyone used to wikimedia-l.
-Aaron
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Aaron,
Are you sure that you can't make any kind of substantive reply here on
this
list, for the benefit of people who have been reading about it here but aren't subscribed to the wiki-research-l list? I note that you also have not addressed any of the concerns either on your talkpage or on the other list.
Thanks, Nathan
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Aaron Halfaker <
ahalfaker@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hey folks,
I appreciate your discussion here. However, you're unlikely to get any participation from actual wiki researchers on wikimedia-l See wiki-research-l[1], the mailing list for discussions of research.
There's
a thread referencing this discussion here[2]. I encourage you to
continue
the conversation there.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2014-July/003570.html
-Aaron
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 4:52 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj@alk.edu.pl
wrote:
RCOM would perhaps be more active if there were clear terms for
members?
best,
dj
On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 12:03 PM, Craig Franklin < cfranklin@halonetwork.net> wrote:
I've spent a half hour or so going through this, and it looks like
Nathan
is on the money here. If RCOM is as inactive as it seems (except
where
it
concerns the research of RCOM members) then it is no great surprise
that
external parties eventually try to do an end-run around it. Unless
an
explanation for this inactivity can be provided, I think that in
its
current form RCOM should be disbanded or at least radically
retooled,
because clearly it's not only ineffective, it's also preventing
potentially
legitimate research from going ahead.
Cheers, Craig
On 17 July 2014 11:06, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
And... unsurprisingly, Aaron has reverted the changes I referred
to
above.
Not with any explanation, of course, other than "not true."
Looking
at
the
list of "reviewed" projects (where the review appears to
constitute a
small
handful of questions on the talkpage), the RCOM has reviewed a
total
of
10
projects in its history. I'm excluding the one where Aaron
himself
is a
co-investigator.
That might sound like a substantial amount, but in 2013 and 2014
the
rate
so far is 1 (one) per *year*. Meanwhile, the AfD request
languished
for 7
months without a peep from Aaron or someone on RCOM. Since we're
on
the
subject, let's look at the research index and see what we can
see.
# There is a "Gender Inequality Index" that has no comments from
RCOM,
posted a month ago. # We have "Modeling monthly active editors" submitted by Aaron
himself.
This is worth looking at[1] as evidently an example of what an
RCOM
member
considers sufficient description of a research project.
Specifically,
nothing at all. # "Number of books read by WikiWriters" a page written by a high
school
student that should have been deleted but hasn't been, suggesting
the
submissions may not be closely monitored... # "Use of Wikipedia by doctors" submitted both to RCOM and to IEG
in
March,
no comment by RCOM. # Chinese Wikivoyage, created in January, no comment by RCOM. # SSAJRP program - extensively documented, posted in October
2013,
no
comment from RCOM and no RCOM liaison. This research is ongoing. # Gender assymetry, posted in September 2013, no comment from
RCOM.
# Dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, August 2013, no comment or participation from RCOM.
I'm sure the list could go on, because the pattern is perfect -
virtually
the only projects to get participation from either Dario or Aaron
are
those
managed by WMF staff members (and most often, Aaron himself is
the
investigator). But the inactivity of RCOM is not news to the WMF.
In
December of last year, Dario posted to rcom-l [2] that "The
Research
Committee as a group with a fixed membership and a regular
meeting
schedule
has been inactive for a very long time." He then stated that
"...the
existence of a fixed-membership group with a recognized authority
on
any
possible matter related to Wikimedia research and associated
policies
has
ceased to be a priority." Another member of RCOM, WMF employee
Jonathan
Morgan, said in June on meta "I'm not sure what RCOM's mandate is
these
days." When asked in March how many projects RCOM had actually
approved,
it
took Aaron four months to reply.[3]
So it is factually incorrect to suggest in documentation that
RCOM
approval
is required for anything; it's clear that RCOM as a body does not
actually
exist. It may be argued that the approval of one of the two
involved
WMF
employees is required. If that's the case, then at least based on
public
evidence they have been doing an absolutely woeful job of keeping
up
with
this labor. I'll admit it's possible that all of the
communication
has
been
via e-mail, and in actuality Aaron and Dario have been very busy
providing
feedback to non-WMF researchers. If that's the case, or of I'm
missing
some
other function that RCOM fulfills, I'd love to hear about it.
Otherwise
it
appears that RCOM is primarily an obstacle to prevent non-WMF
researchers
from conducting research, a strange policy indeed.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Modeling_monthly_active_editors
[2]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/rcom-l/2013-December/000600.html
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research_talk%3ASubject_recruit...
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--
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
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