On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 1:30 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 8:24 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
I'm a total newb here, and I know the grant system between WMF and the different chapters has been debated in the past. But I have a simple question: if WMF is funding these efforts through grants and the grant money is used to review and/or manage content, wouldn't it be indirectly getting involved with reviewing and managing content?
,Wil
Depends on the nature of the grant. In any case I think affiliates are better placed to perform this kind of work anyway, since we'd want it to be done in more than one language and using diverse panels with members from more than just the U.S. But I do think it would be really cool research and the results would certainly be very interesting. It also makes sense as complementary to automated efforts, and then the results of the different methods could be compared to assess effectiveness of the review processes.
I don't think this is an issue; as Erik has kindly pointed out in this thread, the Foundation has funded at least one such study in the past. (However, this study does not seem to have been based on a random sample – at least I cannot find any mention of the sample selection method in the study's write-up. The selection of a random sample is key to any such effort, and the method used to select the sample should be described in detail in any resulting report.)
To me, funding work that results in content quality feedback to the community does not mean that the Foundation is getting involved in content management. The expert panel would obviously have to have complete academic freedom to publish whatever their findings are, without pre-publication review by the Foundation. I would not expect the experts involved to end up editing Wikipedia; if any of them did, this would be their private initiative as individuals, and not covered by any grant.
I would consider such a research programme an important service to the community, just as the Board provides software, guidance through board resolutions, and so forth.
It would be an equally vital service to the reading public that the Foundation's projects serve.
In my view, any such programme of studies should begin with the English Wikipedia, as it is the most comprehensive and most widely accessed project, including by many non-native speakers looking for more detailed information than their own language version of Wikipedia provides. Medical content would be an excellent area to start with.