Research talk:Committee

Addendum to Charter

I would like to suggest two additions/expansions to the charter.

1. Set guidelines for Wikimedians creating and using statistics. I've seen things as problematic as graphs with the vertical scale truncated because an accurate graph didn't convey the message that the author wanted.
2. Set guidelines for use of aggregation and research to single out wikimedians. For example User:Emijrp/List of Wikimedians by number of edits has an opt out mechanism for wikimedians who don't want to be listed.

WereSpielChequers 14:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

These are good points -- be bold :-). Regarding the first point, I'd also love to see more code sharing, more centralized collecting of stats, etc. --Eloquence 17:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I still want to make my point which I initially started to discuss on the webpage. What would be the appropriate place: here or the mailing list?--Yaroslav Blanter 18:14, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest the list to ensure that it reaches all members.--Eloquence 18:17, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the list is the better place. ---- Daniel Mietchen 19:16, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Feeds of this talk may be useful, anyway. --Nemo 20:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Nature of the committee

With regard to wmf:Resolution:Wikimedia Committees, I've categorized this committee as a staff committee. Correct if I'm wrong. Thank you, Nemo 20:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

That's correct, thanks!--Eloquence 17:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Experimental research

In addition to permissions for non-public data, the committee might want to consider developing policy around permissions for research involving experimental manipulation without prior participant consent (e.g. hoaxing, spamming, & baiting), limiting the nature and extent of such manipulations. I realize requiring permission is unenforceable since anyone can edit, but an informative policy statement could guide well-meaning researchers toward better experimental design. Just a thought. ~ Ningauble 17:57, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with this--Yaroslav Blanter 19:42, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
• I agree, though as its initiator I'd question your example of "baiting". WereSpielChequers 11:42, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

  That is a fair criticism. I confess I am often guilty of inapt word choice in the pursuit of succinctness.

  That particular experiment might have benefited from a more rigorous design than inviting people to invent their own test cases (or "bait", in a manner of speaking). As with all intrusive methods, one of the first questions should be whether the question can be researched by non-intrusive means instead, e.g., by surveying all new pages in a certain period of time. ~ Ningauble 13:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

  Hi Ningauble, I see where you are coming from with your comment about research guidelines having a preference for non-intrusive methods, but on wiki that can be seen as a breach of EN:WP:SOFIXIT. We already have tension between people who tag articles in the hope that others will fix them and those who actually fix articles, so someone who trawled through some articles and calculated how many had problems but did nothing to fix or identify them would IMHO risk annoying the community. As for using NEWT as an example of baiting, well to be fair I would accept that there were at least a couple of out of scope test cases in that project; Either the article in question did actually meet the criteria for deletion or in at least one case it was what I'd call baiting, as it arguably met the criteria for a new article but looked like a clear case for deletion. I suppose the analogy would be with policewomen and kerbcrawlers. A kerbcrawler arrested for harassing an off duty policewoman out jogging could have harassed anyone. A kerbcrawler arrested by a policewoman dressed as, and behaving as a hooker may well have been baited. I think it can sometimes be difficult to draw lines between mystery shopping, baiting and breaching experiments, and I'd caution that all three are likely to be contentious. Breaching in particular needs some sort of community authorisation, I believe the foundation ran a breaching experiment some time ago with the IT guys trying to crack admins passwords, so that sort of breaching experiment can be acceptable. I'm also aware of a breaching experiment whereby a group of unwatched BLPs were edited to add incorrect information such as about other people of the same name, I'd use that as an example of a breaching experiment that the community regarded as vandalism. WereSpielChequers 11:17, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Request page

I think it would be helpful if we had a research requests page on similar lines to en:Wikipedia:Bot_requests. Do people agree? WereSpielChequers 18:11, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• In principle, yes, but we need first to come up with some policies, otherwise it is not so much clear how we are going to handle the requests--Yaroslav Blanter 19:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks, and yes I agree we need policies first as to what sort of research can be done and how to interact with the community. WereSpielChequers 20:13, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Expert barriers

Should this survey be mentioned on this page? Expert barriers to Wikipedia -- Jtneill - Talk 12:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

The survey has a subpage of this one, at Research Committee/Areas of interest/Expert involvement/2011 survey, so I don't think it is necessary to put it in here, but since there is nothing wrong in having it either, I just put up a banner. -- Daniel Mietchen 12:20, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Application

Please consider my application as a member of the Research Committee

Claudia Koltzenburg User:Koltzenburg is a literary and cultural studies scholar by training. Current focus of research: The governance of the Commons today and what Open Science arguments can contribute to render the effects of commodification on academic research less detrimental (Philosophy of Technology, short profile). Activities have included (in alphabetical order, most of these are current): computer science bookseller, festival co-organizer, independent researcher, international NGO joint manager, legal news writer, LGBTIQ human rights activist and author, managing editor of an international medical journal, musician, open access/open data and wiki advocacy, pipet calibration, project management. Wikipedia contributor since April 2005. --Koltzenburg 11:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Exposure of the Committee

Hi, I am attending CLEF 2011 and I see people use wikimedia material for research purposes. I can see how the result(s) of such research may be of great benefit to wikimedia projects. Also people seem to be confused as to how to gather information for research purposes such as downloading a set of images in bulk or even aware of the existence of our archive of deleted images which aren't really deleted.

Also I noticed how projects like Yahoo! Research is awarding small prizes (like 500 euros) to promote research on the field relevant to them. Such small grants could be of benefit in gathering more attention to problems we could solve through research.

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 08:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Userbox

I created the userbox {{RCom member}}, which is right now on meta, and if everybody agrees with the design I will also create a similar one in enwiki. If we have a better logo, suggestions are welcome.--Ymblanter 19:24, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I like it! Drdee 20:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Nice one, I made a few tweaks. As for the logo, I don't like the one used on the RCom page (inherited from the former research team/network), I'd rather stick to the current one (Meta). --DarTar 21:10, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Analysis on quality

I've put down some analysis/recommendations on Wiki quality. Basic issues is the failure to get high quality on our high view/high importance articles.

One analysis by Gorbatai uses server data to get a weighted average to see what quality the reader experiences. Only 3% see a GA+ article, only 31% a C+. Seems basic, but I think this is the first time crunched this way. And I think % of reader views is the lens we need, not % of articles.

There are also some capsules on patterns of writing and the like that may be interesting.

Except for three cited analyses, all the work is mine. And all of the implications, recommendations, etc. (or if the language is too strong)...that all comes from me.

See here: PowerPoint: Wikipedia's poor treatment of its most important articles

TCO 15:18, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for researcher permissions?

Have any policies been set yet on who can request researcher permissions and how to go about doing so?

--Varnent (talk) 23:21, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as researcher permission. Research projects requiring subject recruitment usually go through the review process.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:17, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The question may be referring to the "Researcher" user group that was introduced on the English Wikipedia in 2010. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes - that is what I was wondering about. It would be helpful for some folks who do not need or want admin level permissions to have access to things like deleted articles. --Varnent (talk) 19:16, 4 October 2012 (UTC)