Hi everyone,

You might have heard some about it previously, but today we officially announced a new summer initiative in the Community Department,[1] where we've brought in a team of eight researchers to sprint with us for three months on some Wikipedia-focused questions, with a special focus on new editor retention as per the Board's resolution on openness.

The part from our announcement that I wanted to point to in particular is:

"If you’re a Wikipedian who would like to get involved, we’d love to have you participate. We especially seek community members who can pragmatically align our research with the everyday realities of working on the encyclopedia, as well as think about how trends uncovered may be constructively addressed."

Beyond commenting on the public documentation we're still building on Meta (see Category:Summer of Research), this means that in the next few weeks I'll be relaying an open invitation to an IRC meeting where we can discuss the project. In particular we'll be looking for feedback from people who've read our draft research questions, seen our initial results, and who (as active editors on the projects) can help us push our research forward.