The Wikimedia Research Network is a voluntary association of individuals interested in studying the content, communities and technology of the Wikimedia projects. It is free for anyone to join:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Network
Today, 20:00 UTC, the WRN will convene on IRC, on the channel
#wikimedia-research on
irc.freenode.net
Unlike the first meeting, this one will focus on very specific issues. I intend to split the channel very quickly into two main topic areas:
* MediaWiki (software) related research * study of the Wikimedia content and the project communities.
If you've never used IRC before, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_instructions for instructions. To convert UTC to your local timezone, go to: http://worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx
== Agenda ==
For the technical side (this may depend on certain individuals being present):
* Single login: helping Brion with the implementation by providing GUI mock-ups and workflows * Standardized wiki syntax: Lee's proposal ( http://piclab.com/lee/index.php/Wiki_syntax_proposal ) * Wikiversity/Wikisophia: defining the project's technical requirements * If there is interest: ** Wikinews, Wikicommons enhancements ** next generation discussion system * Planning the first community meeting: Wikibooks * anything on your mind
Ideas for the content/community side: * organizing a community-wide survey * evaluating the state of the article validation system (possible feedback to tech team) * increasing collaboration across projects (Wikimedia COTW and similar) * sharing study results and pooling data * anything on your mind
== Research tasks and topics ==
As discussed in the last meeting, we have updated the following pages:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research_Network/Interests (Members of the WRN by topical interest)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research (Research ideas and list of individuals doing research)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks (MediaWiki development tasks and specifications)
The latter two pages should become a major focus of attention for the WRN over the coming months. They are the starting point to further, project-specific pages. Please take a look and edit these pages as you see fit. I would especially appreciate help with moving development tasks from the "To do" section into the table (this requires classifying and describing them, so only do that if you know what I mean with a particular item ;-).
== Research mailing list ==
Specifically for the topic of *content* and *community* related research, a new mailing list has been created:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Technical discussions should continue to take place on:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
There is not yet an organizational mailing list for the WRN itself; I have requested permission to set this up.
All best,
Erik