Research:Committee/Meetings/Meeting 2010-09-18/Log

lucadealfaro — Hi Erik!

Daniel — Hello everyone - I closed the Skype session.

Werespielchqrs — Are we giving up on Skype?

Eloquence — if you haven't set your nickname yet, you can do so by typing /nick YourNickName

Eloquence — Guest99997, that means you ;)

<John___> — Hello everyone

Eloquence — Werespielchqrs, yeah, for now. we can use another voice communication method next time

Ziko — hello

Eloquence — but I suggest we just get started here

dennyV — does anyone have a count on whom we are still missing?

DarTar — Guest99997: are you Giota?

dennyV — I am Denny

millosh — btw, folk at wikivoices are very experienced with skype conferences. maybe we should ask durova to help us next time with skype

Eloquence — millosh, yes, it would be great if you could reach out to her for advice

millosh — this was the only time when multiuser skype conference worked well for me

millosh — i'll do that

DarTar — Giota is not here yet, she's trying to connect

millosh — guest is yaroslav

Eloquence — dennyV, let me do a quick spreadsheet check -- I just sent out the information again by email :)

Eloquence — hi yaroslav, you can change your name by typing /nick YaroslavB or whatever you want to be known at

Eloquence — aaron halfaker seems to be missing

jtriedl — A couple of people are struggling to get IRC to work, and are explaining the problem on the etherpad

Eloquence — mayo seems to be missing

jtriedl — some experts should chime in to help them.

Eloquence — I'll take a peek

YaroslavBlanter — ok, at least it worked

YaroslavBlanter — \nick ymblanter

Eloquence — yay

Eloquence — hi giotita

giotita — hello

YaroslavBlanter — Does anybody (Erik?) has a program for the meeting, or do we just discuss the general points (mission etc)?

Eloquence — YaroslavBlanter, there's a super-rough agenda, basically I was hoping to review the areas of interest, begin talking about the scope of the committee etc.

Eloquence — let me individually prod mayo and aaron, and then we'll get started

Daniel — just tried to get Mayo an Aaron via Skype; both off.

(Werespielchqrs disconnected)

Eloquence — ok

YaroslavBlanter — Mayo and Aaron are not logged in on skype

giotita — the only problem is now, that I only have 15 more minutes

Eloquence — aww

Eloquence — ok

Eloquence — I've emailed the list and tried to prod by skype, and the information is in the pad

Eloquence — let's get started for now and hope they can join us

jtriedl — Should we make an agenda on the Etherpad?

millosh — yes. we'll have the log, so they would be able to read it

Eloquence — let's talk about the agenda here for now, and see if we need the pad

(Werespielchqrs reconnected)

Eloquence — Hi WereSpielchqrs!

giotita — If we talk here, then we can copy to the pad

YaroslavBlanter — are we using the same pad which we used to coordinate the meeting?

Eloquence — yes

jtriedl — Yes.

jtriedl — I'll copy while we talk.

Eloquence — for next time, as an alternative to voice, we can look at webex conference calling, and milos is going to speak to the organizers of the wikivoices podcast about their experiences with skype.

Eloquence — thanks for making do with a low-tech solution for now :-)

Eloquence — it's nice to meet y'all!

giotita — yay!

lucadealfaro — Same here!

millosh — :)

Eloquence — you may remember that we have started a page at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest for collecting notes/thoughts about different areas that we might want to work on

Eloquence — oh, and also, we could do roundtable introductions, but in the interest of time, if you want to know who everyone is, I suggest reviewing the bios at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee if you haven't done so already

dennyV — yes, i guess that would replace the intro round

giotita — Yes, I agree

Daniel — yes; now we need to check whether these areas of interest are the right directions to go, and whether those who signed up have an idea on how to proceed

Eloquence — I suggest as a first agenda point, we discuss the scope/charter as currently laid out on that same page, and the extent to which the areas of interest reflect that scope.

Eloquence — This may take a while ;)

dennyV — There is the discussion on the Area of Interest page that John started

YaroslavBlanter — well, having correspondence to the nicks would be nice

Eloquence — so I'm OK if this first meeting is very exploratory, but I hope we move toward some possible forming of problem-solving groups / takeaways towards the end

dennyV — = Denny Vrandecic

Eloquence — = Erik Moeller, sorry

millosh — = Milos Rancic

lucadealfaro — One question I have is this: is the goal to help _others_ do research, by helping decide whether they can do something, can have some data, etc,

YaroslavBlanter — giotita = Panagiota Alevizou?

lucadealfaro — Or is the goal to define research goals ourselves?

YaroslavBlanter — I guess others are ovcious

Eloquence — lucadealfaro, I think this is a key question that John has already called out on the areas of interest page

giotita — yes, giotita - panagiota (or Giota) Alevizou

jtriedl — jtriedl = John Riedl

lucadealfaro — I tend to think that we should not be setting research goals.

DarioTaraborelli — lucadealfaro: see john's comment - it'd be nice to see if we there is an agreement on this

Eloquence — I'll give my own take on why I instigated this group, and what I think we can get done together, and would love to hear/read your thoughts

lucadealfaro — The Foundation may well have goals, and that is fine.

lucadealfaro — But we should leave to researchers the freedom + ability to define research.

DarioTaraborelli — (I mean the comment at the bottom of /Areas_of_Interest)

Eloquence — The idea for starting this group was inspired by my conversations at WikiSym 2010

millosh — i think that we should say what are our preferred areas for research. not goals, but preferred areas. in the sense of what is needed to wikimedia

dennyV — to give context (copy and pasting from wiki page) : [John]: One general theme that we should explore in some of our first conversations is the extent to which we should see ourselves as a body that is helping to influence the direction of research on Wikipedia, vs. a body that is helping manage access to resources for Wikipedia researchers. I am strongly in favor of the latter. The argument in favor of our focusing on providi

Eloquence — What I noticed was a) There was a large pent-up batch of specific issues that researchers had when conducting research in Wikimedia projects

Eloquence — so, that includes technical access

Eloquence — subject-matter recruiting

dennyV — It is very difficult in advance to predict which types of research will be most valuable, and if we’re trying to do that, we will often be getting in the way of researchers as much as we are helping them. On the other hand, there are a number of ways in which Wikipedia it is not yet an excellent platform for carrying out research, and by removing those obstacles, we have the potential to do a great deal toward enhancing the

Eloquence — sorry, subject recruiting

YaroslavBlanter — In my opinion, we are both

Eloquence — it includes access to non-public data

Eloquence — letters of endorsement

Eloquence — etc.

Eloquence — But b) I also felt that there was a huge interest among the researchers present to know more about what WMF is doing, and what the specific problems were we were tackling

Daniel — a strategy on how to get subject-matter expertise is also probably worthwhile

Eloquence — lol, fair enough daniel

giotita — I agree that the scope should include both

Eloquence — So, I felt that to the extent that there is interest among researchers as to what our core problems and challenges and questions are

giotita — and that WMF is also an object of research ... esp. if this is action research

Eloquence — we should try to help document those problems and challenges and questions

jtriedl — What does "how to get subject-matter expertise" refer to?

Eloquence — so that researchers can think freely about strategies to help provide answers.

Eloquence — jtriedl, I meant "recruit subjects for studies", was a typo

lucadealfaro — If we want to include both, we can: (a) help researchers get access to Wikipedia resources, but without favoring one line of research over another, and (b) give advise to the Foundation about the research that is needed.

jtriedl — Got it.

Daniel — @john (1) a play of words, (2) how to get experts onto WMF projects, so as to help improve the content

jtriedl — Denny is disconnected ..

Eloquence — lucadealfaro, Yes, that's I think my overarching view

lucadealfaro — I think it may well be valuable to advise the Foundation on what tools for research are needed.

jtriedl — He says he's getting DNS fail on freenonde.net right now ..

Eloquence — I want to add one point that I think is likely to be somewhat controversial ;)

lucadealfaro — They have the resources to do something.

YaroslavBlanter — (a) I am not sure: do we want for instance endorse research of what type of BLP violation lead to higher court claims?

lucadealfaro — But if we advise researchers, "we would like research on X", then what? We are not giving out grants, are we?

YaroslavBlanter — I would say we also need to put some restrictions

jtriedl — what is BLP?

Eloquence — When I had these conversations, it was pretty clear that there were lots of things that the research community wanted. It was, on the other hand, also clear, that most of the research wasn't particularly open (open access, open data).

(dennyV disconnected)

YaroslavBlanter — BLP = biographies of living people

Eloquence — So, my own bias is going to be very strongly to tie any access to restricted resources that require WMF time and effort to open access / open data practices and policies within the research community

lucadealfaro — I am not saying we should approve all research. But we should approve research on the basis of which type of data access it needs.

Daniel — I am very interested in this open access/ open data angle

lucadealfaro — We are not "endorsing" research by approving it.

YaroslavBlanter — This I would probably agree with

lucadealfaro — Yes, I agree with Erik, and I am also very interested in such open data access.

Ziko — yes

DarioTaraborelli — lucadealfaro: I very much agree, I really do not think the committee can review all research projects involving wikimedia data let alone approve them

Eloquence — lucadealfaro, we might actually end up giving away $ eventually, but yeah, the best we can really do at this point is identify larger themes, justify why we're interested in them, and hope that some researchers agree. it's not meant to be didactic

giotita — I too agree with Dario

DarioTaraborelli — (which I think was the same point John was making)

jtriedl — I think we should definitely include some notion of open access / open data. We should be very careful about how we define it, though. Do we want to refuse to support research

Eloquence — other than prohibiting unethical or disruptive research, I don't think we need to exercise a huge degree of influence on what type of research is happening

WereSpielchqrs — I think we could and should be able to produce guidance as to certain research methods that the community accepts and others that it treats as vandalism

Eloquence — WereSpielchqrs, exactly

Daniel — I@dario I do not think the committee would have to do the reviews on its own - we could invite others to review, under the premise of publishing the reviews

jtriedl — that is published in places that do not allow free distribution of articles? I would be hesitant about that.

lucadealfaro — I would require open access / open data only for research that uses user time.

Eloquence — does everyone know about the spam experiment that someone conducted on the english wikipedia recently?

DarioTaraborelli — Daniel, I tend to disagree

jtriedl — Denny needs help with Chatzilla.

lucadealfaro — I think if we required open access to what everybody gets out of running a dump analysis, we would only push underground a lot of results.

(DennyV reconnected)

DennyV — Yay! Back in

jtriedl — No. What did they do.

Eloquence — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-16/Spam_attacks

Eloquence — This is an example of research that's absolutely unacceptable IMO

Eloquence — so I agree w/ WereSpielchqrs that it would be good to provide some high-level guidelines and principles, without going into the process of saying "We don't think this research contributes to the field" -- the latter is not our job, but the former is

DarioTaraborelli — erik: yes, that's clearly unacceptable

Ziko — there must be a code of ethics for researchers

lucadealfaro — I think it would be easier to have a policy that said:

WereSpielchqrs — Providing we have drafted some guidelines and agreed them with the community then we don't need to review research proposals - we can create a page for proposals and there will be community volunteers who will do the reviewing

lucadealfaro — For some data (dumps, etc): do whatever you want and don't ask.

Eloquence — WereSpielchqrs, very good point

YaroslavBlanter — And another question is how we can have these guidelines imposed

Eloquence — I'm all in favor of moving toward community processes wherever possible.

lucadealfaro — For user studies that require WMF resources, user involvement, or anything like that, we review

jtriedl — I agree with the idea that we should not review proposals ... except for user studies!

Eloquence — YaroslavBlanter, obviously, at the end of the day, we cannot prevent someone from vandalizing wikipedia

DarioTaraborelli — the committee could help review borderline cases, but I am in favour of minimising the bureaucracy involved

YaroslavBlanter — I guess we should indeed review any research proposals which are potentially disruptive

lucadealfaro — (or ask the community to review)

DarioTaraborelli — YaroslavBlanter: yes, that's more or less what I mean

Eloquence — but we can make a very explicit statement, for example, if a research project violates ethics and has not been reviewed through proper community processes

YaroslavBlanter — Or ask the community

Daniel — A good basis for discussing open data might be http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/3/235/ and http://pantonprinciples.org/

giotita — aside from the guidelines and the proposals that require endorsement, we cannot deal with every researcher that may also act independently

Eloquence — giotita, yep

Eloquence — so, I think there are some obvious things we can do

jtriedl — The panton principles seem great.

giotita — @Eloquence but yes, the explicit statements and 5-6 core guidelines should the trick

jtriedl — We need to fill them in with more detail, though. In particular, it's difficult to define fair time-frames without careful thought.

Eloquence — - we can formulate some high-level principles and ethics of research in Wikimedia projects, vote on them as a group, and share them with the community

Eloquence — - we can try to help develop the community processes that currently don't really exist

Eloquence — - we can make sure that researchers have a good, clear landing page ("Here's what you do if you want to research Wikimedia") that explains all this

jtriedl — I also think we can insist that researchers follow these principles if they want to use resources, and in particular, we can make it difficult for them to get things like the ability to recruit new subjects if they don't play by the rules.

Eloquence — jtriedl, exactly

Eloquence — This is all just in the area of process, but IMO a good way to get started

Eloquence — I want to check in at this point regarding an earlier formulation of the relation of the committee to the research community, and our ability to give guidance vs. make requests

Daniel — agree with john.

Eloquence — so, I want to ask: Does everyone agree with the general principle that, our job is not to tell researchers what to do, but we do want to try to document areas and themes of high concern to WMF and the Wikimedia community?

YaroslavBlanter — I guess a good question is do all the researchers want to be in contact with us / with the community or some of them just prefer to carry out research, publish it but never get in touch

DennyV — I agree with the first part. I do not fully agree with the second.

Eloquence — DennyV, can you elaborate?

DennyV — Even documenting these areas is a kind of agenda setting for the WMF and the community.

millosh — (i agree)

jtriedl — I agree with the first part. The second part seems fine to me, but I wouldn't put it at high value for this group.

DennyV — and for the researchers.

Eloquence — I'm not sure why agenda-setting is a bad thing?

YaroslavBlanter — I am not sure how "not telling researchers what to do" agrees with prohibition of disruptive research

lucadealfaro — I also agree with the first part, not with the second.

DarioTaraborelli — dennyV: I tend to see it as a call for help from the WMF ;)

Ziko — well, if we do kinda support research, we have the right to define what research we find important and what not

lucadealfaro — We can clearly advise the Foundation if asked

giotita — sure, I agree with Eloquence, so long we won't be biased against those that want to research something that is not in the priority areas

DarioTaraborelli — not necessarily as a way to orient research

millosh — DennyV: there is no other entity which would do that, except us

jtriedl — I personally think the highest value actions for us are to (a) document how people ought to behave; and (b) provide tools so people can do the research.

lucadealfaro — We can clearly publish if we want a list of topics on which we wish somebody worked.

Eloquence — lucadealfaro, that's essentially what I mean.

DennyV — Yes, but claiming that in the name of the community?

lucadealfaro — But beyond that, I don't think we should give the impression that we 'foster' some type of research

giotita — yes, Dario's point is good

Ziko — jtriedl: +1

jtriedl — I think it is fine for us to provide the list of topics. I have no problem with that. It just seems likely that we'll fight a lot, and that it's not the most important thing.

millosh — we can talk with community and facilitate that, instead of doing everything alone

lucadealfaro — Erik, what I am saying is that it is very different to provide some advice to the Foundation if asked,

Eloquence — DennyV, as a WMF committee, this group is really serving as an extension of the Foundation, which performs agenda-setting / priority-setting activities all the time

lucadealfaro — and to instead say that the Foundation (or us) 'wishes' researchers outside would do certain things.

Daniel — agree with <lucadealfaro> We can clearly publish if we want a list of topics on which we wish somebody worked.

WereSpielchqrs — Actually I think we should be telling researchers how to interact with Wikimedia and that sometimes means saying what not to do. I also think we can advise where overlaps might occur and pass on requests for research

Ziko — we are saying actually: do what you want. if you want wmf support you must respect our guide lines, and we must find your research worth supporting it

jtriedl — There may be some nice intermediate paths. For instance, I would be happy to facilitate a panel at a major research conference at which some members of this committee might give a presentation on their views on high-value research contributions to Wikipedia.

Eloquence — so, here's an example of what I'm talking about

jtriedl — This might be easier to create than "this is what WMF thinks is needed for research".

Ziko — yes, wmf has a lot of goals (supporting WPs in poor countries), and research is a way to enforce that

Eloquence — you all know, I assume, the various graphs and visuals that show a stagnation of active editors across all Wikimedia projects combined

jtriedl — yes.

Daniel — yes

DennyV — yes

giotita — yes

millosh — (:

Eloquence — so, the obvious questions that can be asked about that have been some questions that have kept us busy internally and externally for a while

Eloquence — :)

Daniel — sure

millosh — (btw, i was thinking about the same example :) )

Eloquence — so, in that case, I'd appreciate coming to this committee, and saying, "Here's a set of questions we have, and some stuff that we've already done, and some stuff we're about to do, can you help us formulate this into a bigger strategic document that asks the research community for help"

Eloquence — and without specifying "We need X, Y, Z to get done", but rather "We wonder why this is the case, and we have some theories, and here's what we know, but we'd appreciate if everyone could bring their crumb / favorite methodology to the table"

jtriedl — What would the target of the strategic document be?

jtriedl — Funding agencies?

Eloquence — think of it a bit like a harvard case study

Eloquence — where you're essentially documenting a set of facts about an issue, and leaving questions open

YaroslavBlanter — No, the target would be to formulate tactical and strategical priorities

DarioTaraborelli — I see the WMF's potential role as setting potential "research competitions" to accelerate research in given priority areas

YaroslavBlanter — First for the community

Eloquence — I think the target audience would be often individual researchers who are enthusiastic enough about WMF that they would read such a document :P

YaroslavBlanter — Because right now we can notanswer simple questions just because we have no data

millosh — jtriedl: the target is to know should we continue to work on wikimedia projects or it is wasting of time ;)

Eloquence — I know that this isn't necessarily the case, and that this isn't necessarily useful for all researchers

Daniel — I also like the idea of research competitions as a way to highlight priorities

DennyV — target in this case means "audience" not research goal

Eloquence — but I think a valuable service that we can provide together (WMF with this committee) is help bundle these "cases" and summaries

jtriedl — Yes, denny

giotita — Yes, I agree with the Harvard style case studies

Eloquence — so that we can both identify themes, call them out, and give useful starting points etc.

millosh — in brief, we should say: we would like to get answers on those questions. not to force anyone, but to ask the researches to help us

Eloquence — millosh, yes

giotita — I meant I like the idea of the case studies with open quiesitons

YaroslavBlanter — Basically, making a wishlist first

Eloquence — so, I'd like to experiment with this approach, basically

DennyV — so, keep a bibliography of wmf-related research

DennyV — maintain a list of open issues and questions

Eloquence — DennyV, YES :-) that too

Eloquence — the current bibliography is sadly outdated :-(

Eloquence — and incomplete

Daniel — perhaps a first step in finding our way would be to review a set of past research projects, and comment from the perspective of the various "areas of interest" tht we signed up for.

DennyV — and identify priorities with regards to the community and wmf interests

WereSpielchqrs — The WMF has access to things that are not available to all researchers. We could put a survey link on a geonotice where editors see it or email an omnibus survey to editors. Researchers could get individual questions on that survey

giotita — have you guys seen the zotero list...?

Daniel — after a while, this should naturally lead to some idea of what we/ the community find worth supporting

millosh — there is a bibliography at strategy wiki, which i've made a year ago with a friend

Eloquence — WereSpielchqrs, "how to run a survey" deserves almost its own little wiki page and starter kit

millosh — but, not complete

Daniel — which zotero list? link?

DarioTaraborelli — to come back to the general agenda of this meeting, it sounds like we are discussing a lot of issues already mentioned in specific areas of interest, maybe the next step would be to ask all participants to this chat to help articulate each area of interest into a specific sub-agenda? Erik?

giotita — it's of published papers on wikimedia related projects ... not a list of projects itself, will try to find it

Eloquence — DarioTaraborelli, I want to make sure we have consensus on the points we're just talking about

DarioTaraborelli — ok fair enough :)

Ziko — it would be a good start to have ONE bibliography at one place

Eloquence — because I want to be sensitive to both a) people's interest and engagement in this committee, b) the view of researchers in particular on some of the methods and approaches

Eloquence — regarding the "case study" / theme topic approach, I understand that if not everyone here wants to spend time on it, but what I'd basically like to do is this

millosh — Ziko: i think that that one is the most complete up to date

Ziko — ok. there are other lists, and they should be combined

Eloquence — share howie's case study with you when it's complete, get your feedback and input, and get your help with disseminating it, if it makes sense.

Eloquence — would that be something anyone would object to?

jtriedl — No, that's fine with me.

millosh — Ziko: my list is the product of combination of the previous lists :)

jtriedl — Other activities seem more likely to bear fruit to me, but that's why we have lots of us ..

Eloquence — jtriedl, exactly :)

Eloquence — getting back to dario's point -- I think we should try to formulate three or so areas of actions, that each of us can commit to dedicating some time to

Ziko — millosh: so it is clear at the other lists that the more complete list exists? fine

Eloquence — I say "areas of action" because I think mostly it's going to be a set of activities e.g. organize the research bibliography

Ziko — eloquence: elaborate area of action

millosh — Ziko: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-pedia/Research

YaroslavBlanter — 1) Make a collection and review of previous research

YaroslavBlanter — 2) Setting guidelines

jtriedl — I'm in for subject recruiting, community norms, and technical access.

YaroslavBlanter — 3) Compiling the wishlist

Eloquence — YaroslavBlanter, I would add to that "begin clean-up and re-organization of meta.wikimedia.org pages relevant to research"

giotita — Sadly I have to go very very soon...the zotero group on wikipedia research is here http://www.zotero.org/groups/wikipedia_research

Eloquence — thanks giotita :-)

YaroslavBlanter — Yes, this is into my point 1)

Eloquence — giotita, we will share the log on the list and wiki

YaroslavBlanter — It has of course to be reformulated anyway

Daniel — bye, giotita!

WereSpielchqrs — If one of the three is drafting guidance for reearchers wishing to interact with the Wikimedian community I'm wiilling to do a first draft - community Norms is another name for it

giotita — cheers,

Eloquence — what do you mean with "the wishlist" yaroslav?

Ziko — bye, giotita

giotita — i will try to formulate my priorities in the wiki...

DarioTaraborelli — by giotita - see you soon ;)

Eloquence — bye giotita

giotita — speak soon byeeeee

YaroslavBlanter — I mean what we have just discussed - what we think are research priorities

Eloquence — there goes our only female participant ;P

Eloquence — YaroslavBlanter, right

Eloquence — I think there's a different "wishlist"

Eloquence — which is probably very much on jtriedl's mind ;-)

jtriedl — There are already substantial drafts of "guidance for researchers", that should grow into the new version.

Eloquence — of things that researchers need from WMF, or from the Wikimedia movement

jtriedl — :)

Eloquence — so I think there may be "4) prioritized list of support resources that WMF can provide"

YaroslavBlanter — yes

Eloquence — but this sounds like a good list to start work on

jtriedl — !

Eloquence — for the not so wiki-active ones among you:

YaroslavBlanter — though I am nor sure if it should be combined with the guidelines

Eloquence — you can create subpages of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee

Eloquence — by typing something like http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/My_subpage

Eloquence — and creating the page -- we'll figure out how to organize it

DarioTaraborelli — shall we create a subpage for each areas of action as a next step to (1) define specific tasks and (2) see who is willing to participate in which area?

Daniel — I think this subpage approach is useful

Eloquence — DarioTaraborelli, that sounds good, then we can use the mailing list to make sure everyone can add themselves to an area of work

Daniel — one for each "subcommittee", plus possibly one for each of us

DarioTaraborelli — are people happy with the current AoI list for example? Or should we maybe merge some of them?

Eloquence — DarioTaraborelli, are you volunteering? :)

DarioTaraborelli — sure, I can start reorganise the page

(giotita disconnected)

Eloquence — DarioTaraborelli, I would suggest just picking an initial smaller set of work areas, like the ones yaroslav identified

Eloquence — we can't solve all the world's problems immediately ;)

DarioTaraborelli — we can create stubs though :p

Eloquence — lol

Eloquence — fair enough

Eloquence — OK, dario is volunteering to re-organize the page

Eloquence — yay ;)

DarioTaraborelli — I am just thinking how to best move forward to reach an agreement on specific sub-areas

Eloquence — as a final closer, can I ask everyone for a one sentence comment

Daniel — Is there a history of how the Committee's priorities have been defined?

Eloquence — as to what area of work they are truly excited to get started on? :)

Eloquence — I'll start: I'm excited to help re-organize the bibliographic, landing pages, starter kit etc. -- I think Meta in general needs a lot of clean-up, and I'm happy to help

Daniel — I am excited about getting a workable open access/ open data policy off the ground

Eloquence — Daniel, I think we're defining them right now ;)

DennyV — I am excited about providing the so-called "starter kit", i.e. identify and possibly create resources that would foster research on them.

Ziko — I believe that there are some basics that are still needed. The bibliography is one example. On my agenda there is a concept for a "Wikimedia Handbook and Yearbook", I am now discussing with Zack.

jtriedl — I believe the most exciting opportunities are exploring new interfaces that encourage new users to grow into Wikipedians; I am most excited about developing ways that researchers can participate in creative exploration of intelligent user interfaces.

Eloquence — Ziko, but, the real question is, _are you excited_ ? ;-)

YaroslavBlanter — I am most interested in brainstorming on what research is currently needed

Daniel — @eloquence so if we can redefine them, what about something slong the lines of expert recruitment for WMF projects (not currently on the list)?

Eloquence — Daniel, it's on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Areas_of_interest so yes, let's start a meta-page to pull together some of the pre-existing work e.g. by aaron/john

Eloquence — oh sorry

Eloquence — I keep getting confused between the two points of subject recruitment and expert recruitment ;)

DarioTaraborelli — I like very much the idea of setting up an environment to boost the volume of research on wikimedia projects and help people (researchers, journalists, interested editors) to navigate through it to avoid redundancy - the idea of testing how new interfaces affect collaborative behaviour is also very close to my interests

WereSpielchqrs — Daniel I suggest we refer expert recruitment to the next Cambridge meetup - as far as I know the only wikimedian meetup where professors are in the majority

jtriedl — Does any work get done there?

Eloquence — Daniel, it's a hugely interesting area -- not entirely clear it should be in the scope of the research committe, but can I ask you to lay out your view to rcom-l to get a discussion started?

Daniel — fine with me.

jtriedl — My experience is work is proportional to (Ph.D. students - professors) : 2

DennyV — :D

Ziko — Aren't there a lot of students searching a subject for their BA/MA thesises?

Ziko — -es

Daniel — I'll be happy to provide an intro to the topic to the list

Eloquence — cool

Eloquence — it looks like our ability to get excited as a group is tempered by our nerdiness ;-) but I'm pleased by the progress we're making so far

DarioTaraborelli — Ziko: that could very well be a topic for research competitions

Eloquence — hey aaron :)

Eloquence — we're just about to wrap up

Ziko — dario: what do you mean by research competitions?

DarioTaraborelli — formulate research questions that can potentially involve several research groups at the same time

Daniel — @ziko things like https://www.hypios.com/problems

jtriedl — Hi Aaron!

Daniel — just with a focus on WMF

DarioTaraborelli — many conferences / scientific societies run similar contests

DarioTaraborelli — hi aaron

jtriedl — Or the Netflix prize :)

AHalfaker — *Sigh* when i initially looked at the time conversion charts, I put the converted time on Sunday for CDT, not saturday :(

Eloquence — Takeaways: 1) Dario will help organize some action pages on meta for the different areas of work, 2) we've all expressed our top interest here already, and will get started on the respective wiki pages, 3) I'll share with you Howie's research case in the next 2-4 weeks

DarioTaraborelli — sounds good to me

Daniel — sounds fine to me

millosh — yep

Eloquence — OK, everyone - thanks for coming, and I'm hopeful that we will yet get to use voice communication :)

jtriedl — Sounds good.

jtriedl — Ciao!

Daniel — ok, bye!

Eloquence — I'll post the log in a bit. Bye all!

DarioTaraborelli — bye everyone

YaroslavBlanter — thanks, bye

WereSpielchqrs — http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Community_Health/Former_administrators_survey is an example of how we can get research cooperation

WereSpielchqrs — bye

Ziko — bye

millosh — bye

DarioTaraborelli — Eloquence: I'll start working on the page on Monday - travelling back to the UK tomorrow