[Foundation-l] Dario Taraborelli joins Wikimedia Foundation

[Erik Moeller]

Dear all,

it is my pleasure to announce that Dario Taraborelli (User:DarTar) is
joining the Wikimedia Foundation as Senior Research Analyst, Strategy,
reporting to me. As of this week, Dario is based in San Francisco,
having relocated from the UK. Dario joins Howie Fung and me as part of
the Wikimedia Foundation Strategy Team. Our job is to advance
Wikimedia's strategic thinking on an ongoing basis, and to help
organize relevant research and analytics.

Dario most recently was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre
for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey in the UK.
Previously he was Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Psychology,
University College London. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science from
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, an MSc in
Cognitive Science, and an MA in Philosophy of Science. He has taught
at various universities, including Sciences Po in Paris, Université
Paris 7, and École Normale Supérieure. He has served as advisor and
editor for numerous scientific publications, organizations and
conferences.

Notably, Dario has participated in wiki-related research and
development since 2004. He is lead developer of WikkaWiki, an open
source wiki engine; developer of WikiTracer, a prototype toolkit for
wiki analytics; and founder and developer of ReaderMeter, a mashup
visualizing readership of scholarly publications. He has led or
participated in many other projects relevant to wikis and social
media. See http://nitens.org/taraborelli/research for a list of his
research projects and publications.

Dario has supported the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor since
December 2010. Since then he has worked on a number of projects for
us, including:

- Analysis of data from the pilot of the Article Feedback Tool. You
can see his initial findings here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/February_2011

- Organizing meetings and priorities of the Wikimedia Foundation
Research Committee. See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee

- With Daniel Mietchen and Giota Alevizou (members of RCom),
organizing a survey of expert participation in Wikipedia projects.
See:
http://survey.nitens.org/?sid=21693

- In collaboration with Moritz Stefaner and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia,
an analysis and visualization of AfD discussions in the English
Wikipedia:
http://notabilia.net

I'm very excited to have Dario on our team. He and his family are
still settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dario's official start
date is April 18. Please join me in welcoming him!

All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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