[Foundation-l] Dynamics of Online Interactions and Behavior

[Jérôme Hergueux]

Hi everyone!



Thanks for your interest in our Harvard – Sciences Po study! I just wanted
to jump in and add a few comments to Steven's answer. As Steven has rightly
pointed out, we are currently conducting a quite large scale research
project on the dynamics of online interactions and behavior, and we would
like (and are now ready) to invite Wikipedians to participate in it. All
participants are paid and Wikipedians have the possibility to donate their
earnings to the Foundation if they wish to do so.

We updated the information posted on the research project page on Meta.
Sorry if the previous version (work in progress) may have appeared a bit
confusing to some. Before starting the study, we wanted to make sure that we
were following the best practices possible according to community
principles, as this is a priority for us. So we first integrated in our
protocol the suggestions of the Research Committee (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_good_practices_on_Wikipedia_researchand
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group) and
asked advises to other researchers. We also went on the Admins’ noticeboard
to present our envisioned research protocol and eventually modified it
according to the feedback we got. We thank the Admins who got involved in
the discussion as this was very important to us: we wanted to set an
exemplary precedent of a successful and respectful cooperation between the
Research community and the Wikipedia community. So we hope that this
approach will set the path for future researchers willing to recruit
participants from Wikimedia projects. As we also think that developing
research is a way to contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects,
we will make all of our research outputs available under an open access
licence, share our datasets with the community (as far as will be consistent
with preserving the privacy of participants) and propose to present our
research at a Wikimania conference. We also opted for the use of a FLOSS
software to conduct this study.

The SiteNotice option stood out in the discussion as the most efficient,
least intrusive and least disruptive method for advertising the study, so
Steven and the WMF very nicely agreed to help us out with this solution. We
are now totally ready to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate and
are waiting for a convenient date to start. In coordination with Steven, we
will make sure that all relevant informations are sent to this list as soon
as that time comes!



Jérôme (on behalf of the research team).




2011/4/14 MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com>

> Steven Walling wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 2:39 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> >>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and_Behavior
> >>
> >> Does anyone know what this is? There was some discussion on the talk
> page,
> >> but that's now apparently been cleared away.
> >
> > It's a joint study by some researchers from Sciences Po (in Paris) and
> > Harvard's Berkman Center. Like most other projects, you can see other
> > details at the list of research projects on Meta.[1]
> >
> > The basic gist is that they're going to be running a survey for
> Wikipedians
> > as part of their study. Participants will be paid (by the researchers,
> not
> > the WMF) since it's quite a long survey, and there will be an option to
> > donate your funds to the Foundation if you like.
> >
> > [...]
>
> Ah, thanks for the explanation. Much appreciated. :-)
>
> I put a link to this e-mail and to Meta-Wiki's "Research/Projects" page at
> the top of the talk page, so that will hopefully prevent future confusion:
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=2496408&oldid=2495842>.
>
> John Vandenberg wrote:
> > This was mentioned back in January
> >
> >
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063703.html
>
> Ah, thanks. I'd had a tab open to remember to look into this and I'd
> completely forgotten how I'd come across it initially. I remember first
> thinking it was spam, to be honest. (Looking at the page's logs, it seems I
> wasn't the only one.) When I went to look at it again today and noticed the
> cleared talk page, I figured I'd just ask the list and that someone would
> surely know what was going on.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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