Wikimedia Research Network

Update August 2010: The Wikimedia Research Network was the first effort to wiki-organize all individuals engaged in Wikimedia-relevant research. While people have continued to sign up on this page, no meetings or activities have been organized since 2006. If you would like to simply identify yourself as a researcher, the best place to do so is on the Research page. If you would like to interact with other researchers, there is an open mailing list, wiki-research-l, to do so. Finally, the Research Committee is a formalized Wikimedia Foundation committee which helps to organize policies, practices and priorities around Wikimedia-related research.

Wikimedia Research Network

Research

Reports

Research Network

Members

Meetings

Tasks

Development tasks

modify

The Wikimedia Research Network (WRN), guided by a Chief Research Officer, will study Wikimedia's content, technology and community, to identify the needs of the individual Wikimedia projects, to facilitate the prioritization process, to make recommendations for targeted development, to guide and motivate outside developers, to assist in the study of new project proposals, and to collaborate with researchers who are not part of the Wikimedia community. The team should attempt to build a bridge between the Wikimedia community and the developers, and channel the creative energy of thousands of users to useful ends.

Rationale

See /Rationale.

Definitions

Wikimedia Research Network

The Wikimedia Research Network is an open group tasked with the following:

• research the development needs of the individual projects as well as MediaWiki as a whole
  • prioritize software enhancement proposals which are currently in Bugzilla
  • conduct surveys among users of the projects
  • carefully study the work processes in each Wikimedia project
  • organize regular IRC meetings with project communities
  • coordinate and lead the effort towards peer review and stable offline editions of Wikimedia content
  • regularly review the usability of our software
• develop rough ideas into full specifications for development
• make the results of research permanently available to the wikimedia community, in a structured way
• if developers are hired, or outside parties participate, supervise development from specification to implementation, in coordination with the MediaWiki Release Manager and the developers
• assist in the planning, definition and implementation of new project proposals like Mobile Audio Wikipedia, Wikiversity, etc., and make sure that new projects are not set up before their technical needs are identified
• coordinate academic or non-academic research into Wikimedia content (note: see Research/Social Research Collaborations for coordination of sociology-oriented research)

The Wikimedia Research Network is not positioned in any way above the developer community, it exists alongside it. Its purpose is not "Research and Development", but Research and, to a smaller extent, coordination of outside development. Its primary purpose is to publish reports and recommendations. At present, the Research Network is also not defined to study hardware needs and making purchase recommendations, although it could take on such tasks if qualified members join.

Chief Research Coordinator

The CRC is an official position appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. The functions of this role are described on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on the Chief Research Coordinator page.

The current Chief Research Coordinator, Greg Maxwell, was appointed February 17, 2007 [1].

Update August 2010: This Board-created volunteer role has expired and no longer exists.

Membership

Membership in the Wikimedia Research Network is open to anyone. However, the Network can decide, with a two-thirds majority, to exclude existing members (this is meant to ensure smooth cooperation, and a community consensus for outside representation).

Current members

Please simply add your name below if you wish to join the Network. As noted above, there is no application procedure, only an exclusion procedure. For further classification of yourself, please also list your research interests on Wikimedia Research Network/Interests.

Antonella Elia James F. Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason Austin Mohd Israil Saifi (India) brassratgirl Csisc Cathy Ralf Schneider Cormaggio Countrymike Daniel Mayer David Gerard Dionysios DCLXVI Doug Morris dppl Ed Poor Eloquence Erik Zachte Eskimo Francis Schonken Fuzheado Garrett GerardM Greeves Guaka Guédon here Hagurganus idaho2000 Ingo Frost IlyaHaykinson James Johnson Jim Cognito Jimmy Collins John Qi Dong John Vandenberg Judith Kevin Gamble Kevin Baas Lee Daniel Crocker LoopZilla Wayne Mackintosh Randy Johnston Magnus Manske MmmmJoel Mathias Schindler Michael Reschke Mcm John Schmidt Mike Finney

Mindspillage Mkalz Napa NGerda Jakob Voss Nikerabbit Niki Kittur OdileB PARC Wiki Researcher PatrickD PaulY Charley Quinton Dan | Talk Joseph Reagle John Riedl RobLa RossKoepke Andreas Brändle Sandeep Krishnamurthy Soufron Stevertaco Jeremy Tobacman WiseWoman the wub Zappaz CXI Jose Felipe Ortega MartinMai George Chriss Witty lama Archer7 Piotrus Thunderhead Xenon Javier Carro DamianFinol Saidkassem Trondtr Mike Tian-Jian Jiang Kotaro Nakayama Olivier Auber mirwin Marc Schwenzer Ziko van Dijk Victor Roy Harini Vaidyanath Ben Collier Rob Sheehe Joe Corneli Rodrigo Gonzatto Phauly Mayo Fuster Morell Samuele2002 Sami Mlouhi Blurby Mytochondria User:Benjamin Mako Hill User:Dnshitobu User:Sir Amugi

Research

See the Research page for a list of research resources and a list of individuals actively working on research projects and short description of such.

See the Research Projects page for a list of current and proposed research projects.

Meeting history

• Notes on 5 June 2005 meeting (inaugural meeting)
• Notes on 18 June 2005 meeting (key topics: single login, wiki syntax, article validation, surveys)
• Notes on 10 July 2005 meeting (key topics: contributor survey, external collaboration, category changes, templates changes, single login)
• Notes on 6 November 2005 meeting (key topics: User survey, Wikiversity)
• Notes on 3 December 2005 meeting (key topics: metadata, wikidata, budget ideas, shared watchlists)
• Wikimedia_Research_Network/Meetings/2006-06-17
• There was a research workshop at Wikimania 2006 (see also the Wikimania proceedings page);
• and another similar workshop at Wikisym 2006, on August 23, 2006.

Upcoming meetings

• • channel: #wikimedia-stats on irc.freenode.net.

Mailing list

There is a public mailing list for research related to the content and the communities of the Wikimedia projects: wiki-research-l.

• mailing list
• archive
• usenet (via gmane)
• WWW (via gmane)

Please use wikitech-l for technical issues! The list is not meant to be used for organizational issues of the Research Network either; a separate mailing list for this has been requested.