The Wikimedia Research Team ..

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

.. is a new working group focused on studying Wikimedia's content and technology, developing recommendations and specifications, and building bridges between outside researchers, developers, the Board, and the community.

The WRT is open for anyone to join. It is a way to channel information and communications, nothing more.

The first meeting of the Wikimedia Research Team will take place on Sunday, June 5, at 20:00 UTC. To figure out what this is in your timezone, go to:

http://worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx

The IRC meeting will take place in the channel #wikimedia-research on irc.freenode.net, where all the Wikimedia IRC channels are. See

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

if you need help connecting.

Some organizational topics for the agenda:

* Agreeing on the structure and mission of the Team * Building a membership roster with a list of interests for each member * Systematically inviting individuals from all fields of research to participate * Distinguishing between high priority issues that affect the whole Team and issues that should be discussed in breakaway groups * Deciding which tools to use where (e.g. when to use Bugzilla, when to use Meta) * Defining the first breakaway groups

Some specific deliverables I'd personally like to start working on soon:

* Development task framework. How important is a specific task, how suitable is it for newbie developers, how suitable for outside development (e.g. extensions), how important is it for Wikimedia? A general procedure for deciding when a task should move from volunteer development into a recommendation for targeted (paid) development is also needed. * Research projects. I'm sure there are many students who'd like to do a thesis on Wikimedia. We can develop a list of worthwhile topics to study. For example: "It would be interesting to compare how, *over a range of defined topics* (e.g. 'articles that any encyclopedia should have'), how our content has developed over time -- in size, number of images, links, and so on." Or: "A distributed survey among experts on the quality of Wikipedia articles vs. articles in other encyclopedias." * Community meetings. I want to have IRC meetings with each Wikimedia project community (Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikicommons, Meta-Wiki) to listen to their individual needs and discuss possible solutions with them.

But, as noted above, we have to agree in consensus which issues are high priority and concern the group as a whole.

I would be very glad if you could make it. Please also invite others to come, and to join the team itself at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Team

The IRC log from the meeting will be made public.

Let me know if you have any questions.

All best,

Erik Möller Chief Research Officer, Wikimedia Foundation