[Wikipedia-l] academic inquiry msg

[Cormac Lawler]

On 3/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/19, Vedant Lath <vedantlathetc at gmail.com>:
>
> > The IP address of the sender
> > (219.79.22.41<http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=219.79.22.41>)
> > is from Hong Kong, and AFAIK, China blocks wikimedia projects.
>
> Mainland China and Hong Kong are acting mostly independently in that
> respect, so I think it would not be blocked in Hong Kong
>
> > So, how can a
> > person from Hong Kong possibly access wikipedia extensively so as to analyse
> > the contributions and nature of wikipedia?
>
> See above; interestingly, on another university in Hong Kong (the
> University of Hong Kong) there is also research into Wikipedia, led by
> Andrew Lih ([[w:en:User:Fuzheado]]).
>
> > and moreover, he says that he is
> > sending it to only 100 wikipedians. This can make the result very different
> > from the actual fact.
>
> There will always be large differences, because people who answer an
> enquiry like this are not a random sample from the total population of
> people having been asked.
>
> > should i participate in the enquiry?
>
> That should be your free choice, in my opinion.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


Andre's just said pretty much everything that I was going to - I most
definitely agree with participation in research being a voluntary
decision. As a researcher myself, I know about the problems attached
to consent, ethics, sampling, bias etc. I'm not going to comment on
how someone else conducts their research - unless they ask - that's up
to them to be conscious of. But researchers should be open to
questions from participants about their own process - you should feel
free to ask questions about how and where the information is used etc,
before you decide to say anything. Or if you don't want to say
anything, tell them why not. This itself is good feedback.

General comments: there is and has been lots of research done on
participants of Wikimedia projects - see, for example:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research . The questions you've been
asked are not unusual - I've asked more or less the same ones myself
;-). And a sample of 100 is not unusual either. There is a limitation
on conclusions drawn from *all* research - again, it is up to the
researcher to be conscious of this.

Cormac [[w,m,b:en:User:Cormaggio]]


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