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