[Foundation-l] Getting involved in a Wikimedia Foundation research project

[Steven Walling]

Hi everyone,

You might have heard some about it previously, but today we officially
announced a new summer initiative in the Community Department,[1] where
we've brought in a team of eight researchers to sprint with us for three
months on some Wikipedia-focused questions, with a special focus on new
editor retention as per the Board's resolution on openness.

The part from our announcement that I wanted to point to in particular is:

"If you’re a Wikipedian who would like to get involved, we’d love to have
you participate. We especially seek community members who can pragmatically
align our research with the everyday realities of working on the
encyclopedia, as well as think about how trends uncovered may be
constructively addressed."

Beyond commenting on the public documentation we're still building on Meta
(see Category:Summer of Research), this means that in the next few weeks
I'll be relaying an open invitation to an IRC meeting where we can discuss
the project. In particular we'll be looking for feedback from people who've
read our draft research questions, seen our initial results, and who (as
active editors on the projects) can help us push our research forward.

-- 
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org

1. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/06/01/summerofresearchannouncement/