[WikiEN-l] Wiki Research

[Andrew Gray]

On 22/06/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> >I was wondering if you would agree to my analysing your contributions to
> >Wikipedia. This will basically involve calculating how many times you've
> >contributed to Wikipedia within the time period of a week.
>
> Since contribution histories of users are all public, no permissions
> should be needed to analyze any of them.

In no particular order...

a) politeness;
b) complying with research ethics requirements;
c) value-addedness - if you're analysing specific users, and they have
consented to work with you, you can query them about details.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 (who did comparable LIS research going on two years ago...)
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk