[RCom-l] Fwd: surveys by community members

[Aaron Halfaker]

It seems to me that RCom is currently suffering from having too many
responsibilities that are not fulfilled.  I'm not sure we are ready to add
a new responsibility.

We should carefully consider whether RCom can effectively fulfill this
additional role.

-Aaron

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 6:43 PM, Dario Taraborelli <
dtaraborelli at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> All,
>
> here's a message from Siko, WMF Head of Community Fellowships. As with the
> 2011 Summer of Research, WMF is willing to fund research (both in the form
> of individual fellowships and small grants) to contribute to a better
> understanding of our community and projects. While there are existing
> procedures for community fellowships and grants, we don't have guidelines
> to apply for research fellowships/research grants.
>
> Some community members have started submitting research proposals for RCom
> review and I thought this could be a good chance to get Siko and Asaf (Head
> of the WMF grants program) to help us draft guidelines for the evaluation
> of research fellowship/research grant proposals, which are currently
> missing from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ
>
> What I envision is a two-tiered process:
>
> (1) RCom will first review proposals based on its standard procedures,
> regardless of funding requests. We will solicit the opinion of external
> referees via a single-blind review process when needed (we did this for the
> EPIC/Oxford proposal). We will then write our recommendations whether a
> specific proposal is methodologically sound, relevant and non-disruptive to
> our community to help WMF make a funding decision .
>
> (2) WMF will request supplementary information to projects applying for
> funding and use this information, feedback from RCom and its internal
> assessment of the priority/usefulness of the proposal to make a funding
> decision.
>
> This will help RCom focus on the research value of the proposal per se
> while leaving to the WMF fellowship/grant program the actual funding
> decision. On a related note, I am working closely with Philippe Beaudette
> to configure SugarCRM to help us triage, handle and assign requests for
> RCom review.
>
> Please let me know if you have any comments or concerns on the overall
> proposal. As Siko notes, the Dispute Resolution project below is a research
> proposal from a community member asking for regular SR support/review, not
> a WMF-sponsored project, and potentially a good case to get this process
> started.
>
> Dario
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *Siko Bouterse <sbouterse at wikimedia.org>
> *Date: *November 22, 2011 10:33:58 AM PST
> *To: *Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli at wikimedia.org>
> *Subject: **surveys by community members*
>
> Hi Dario,
>
> This is a survey request from a community member interested in learning
> more about his Wikipedia projects, for RCom's review:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Dispute_Resolution
>
> Background:
> Steven Zhang is active in MedCab and the creator of some other DR pages
> and processes on EN:WP.  I've been speaking with him about the possibility
> of doing a fellowship on dispute resolution, though an exact project is
> still to be pinned down and nothing is approved for fellowship at this
> point.  Although the survey is not an official WMF project, and Steven is
> acting in the capacity of community member, I am interested in the results
> of his survey to learn more about current issues with DR and see if there
> are projects that we should support in the form of a fellowship.
>
> This may be a growing need, I've gotten a couple of similar inquiries so
> far and expect they will increase as we ramp up community fellowships.  I'm
> curious to know what the RCom process looks like for surveys run by
> community members, some of whom might not have the same research background
> or methodological training as academic researchers, but are motivated to
> learn and share understanding about their community and projects.   Is this
> something worth asking about on the RCom list?  (If so, feel free to
> forward my message).
>
> In this case, its a relatively small sample size so hopefully not too
> disruptive.  I think Steven could also use some guidance about what free
> survey collector would be recommended for use - is RCom ok with something
> simple like Google Forms or have other recommendations?
>
> Thanks!
> Siko
>
> --
> Siko Bouterse
> Head of Community Fellowships
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> sbouterse at wikimedia.org
>
>
>
>
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>
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