Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Research

How to participate in the discussion
&diams; I added a section on how to participate above, since I wasn't at WikiSym. For example, where will this policy be discussed/planned? Right here? Could someone in the know please put some brief notes in this section above. Thanks! --R27182818 (talk) 01:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a good question. I imagined that the WikiProject and its talk page would be a good hub for this discussion, but it seems others want to bring it to the talk page of WP:Research.  I'm not sure which is the best option at this point.  --E poch F ail (talk 17:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Indented line
 * Indented line

I did some minor editing on the text in order to improve its clarify Bilalak (talk) 21:22, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Related Projects

 * WikiProject Wikidemia has a similar purpose, but has not been updated in years. I've intended this WikiProject to be an update and refocusing of Wikidemia. --E poch F ail (talk
 * One of the suggestions at Wikisym was delink the redirect from Research (it currently goes to WikiProject Wikidemia), and have that be the new locus for this. Any thoughts on that?  Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 20:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I see. I think I misunderstood that suggestion when it came up.  It seems to me that WP:Research would be a good place for proposed policy/guidelines where WikiProject_Research would be more general and could support the creation of a "study approval group" that would manage sampling of editors to ensure that they are not overwhelmed.  --E poch F ail (talk 20:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I think the confusion was mine. That sounds like a good idea - keep the project and the policies related, but separate. Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 17:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Should recruitment be opt-in or opt-out?
We discussed this quite a bit at WikiSym. It appears that there is a relatively common practice of allowing users to opt-out of various bot interactions such as putting on your talk page when you don't want SineBot to automatically sign your comments when you forget. I felt like we all agreed that, if we were to deploy a subject recruitment bot that posts on users' talk pages, this style of opting-out would be appropriate. Editors who would not like to be contacted by the subject recruitment bot would be left alone. No one would be automatically opted-in to any study. Instead, they would only be opted-in to hear about studies. It seems that a minimal amount of harm/annoyance would take place. --E poch F ail (talk 15:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Another note... If we do approach the subject recruitment problem via a new bot, we'll be able to get good feedback from the community during the approval process. --E poch F ail (talk 15:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * &diams; I agree -- as a researcher, opt-in would be far less useful than opt-out. But, I think it's a key issue to reach consensus on. --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think opt-out is critical, as opt-in only captures users who are knowledgeable enough to know that there is an opt-in mechanism, in addition to the self-selection bias. I also don't think that it would be difficult or controversial, if done the right way. The template that I would suggest working with is Template:Bots, and respecting this template is known as exclusion compliance.  Right now, you can specify certain categories of user talk page bot activity to opt out of (afd notices on articles you created, no license notices on images you uploaded, etc).  I would suggest adding a category for surveys, and seek the advice and consensus of the bot operators who have dealt with a similar problem.  Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Although I agree that recruitment works better (and samples are also better) with opt-out, avoiding that spammy feeling will be pretty important, lest the bot that posts the requests get shut down. This probably means good rotation of requests between editors and careful rate-limiting.  -- 128.84.103.49 (talk) 20:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Research vs. Research as hub for discussion?
A new WikiProject would be able to support discussion and organization with full use of main and talk page and could accommodate a multi-fronted effort (study bot, construction of policy, communication, etc). On the other hand, the last time we tried something similar to this (Wikidemia), it didn't last long. It could be that bringing the discussion to the talk page of WP:Research would be sufficient. Thoughts?--E poch F ail (talk 17:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think WP:Research would be an excellent place to eventually put down the guidelines that the community comes to consensus on, but I find a WikiProject better for discussion, coordination, and deployment purposes than just one talk page. -- PiperNigrum (hail&#124;scan) 19:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * &diams; You mention several types of effort, but it seems to me that the key problem - no policy - should be the highest priority, and that we should focus on that before worrying about implementation (bots, etc.). Is it easier to work towards consensus with a proposed policy (i.e., WP:Research) and an accompanying talk page? --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the idea was that we could use the bot approval process as a kind of preliminary review/approval mechanism for the proposed WP:Research policy - which would have an accompanying talk page where wording, interpretations, violations, etc would be discussed. I think that would only cover interview/survey/etc canvassing, but that was the bulk of the frustration, right?  The WikiProject would stay a more general space for the community of wikiresearchers - initially a staging ground for WP:Research, our main goal at the moment but maybe a revival of WP:Wikidemia later.  Am I getting this right?  Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

When do we bring non-researchers into the discussion?
&diams; So far it's just academics on this page. --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that we could do a bit of canvasing of editors who would are likely to be interested in this process. We might want to wait until we decide whether we want to bring the discussion to a new WikiProject or Wikipedia_talk:Research.  --E poch F ail (talk 15:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Examples of unmediated interactions
I've copied this list over from the proposal (and added another I found) because I think it's important to catalog examples of interactions between researchers and Wikipedians to show the difficulties encountered by researchers, in terms of both pushback by Wikipedians, as well as researchers inadvertently violating Wikipedia norms; both of which we are trying to address in this WikiProject. -- PiperNigrum (hail&#124;scan) 17:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * User talk:KatherinePanciera - IRB approved survey - negative reaction from some Wikipedians halted the process. No policy to turn to.
 * User talk:CMUResearcher - Several Wikipedia norms/policy violations by a researcher trying to promote a survey
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 61 - Deployment of IRB approved UI study that met with resistance from Wikipedians questioning the study's methodology and execution.
 * Wikipedia talk:Spam/Archive 2 (Found on Wikidemia) - A user survey (attempt?) in 2006 which posted messages on article pages, and was considered to be spam.
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive572 - There was also a minor question about SuggestBot posting to a small sample of new editors' talk pages to see how it would work with newly created accounts without asking their permission. This was quickly resolved, but again, getting the community to at least roughly buy in that this is an okay idea will be pretty important. -- 128.84.103.49 (talk) 20:33, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:RESEARCH and RESEARCH vs. Research and vs. WP:Research
So it seems that while WP:Research and Research redirect to WikiProject Wikidemia, WP:RESEARCH and RESEARCH redirect to Researching with Wikipedia. I think that the lowercaps versions are safe to delink from Wikidemia (after a discussion) and use for research policy. However, I don't think doing the same thing with the all-caps versions would go over well. And that Research page is needed just as much as our Research page, I think. Is it confusing? Is this even an issue? Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm was not aware of the all-caps (WP:RESEARCH). Is there a generally accepted norm around all-caps article names?  I'm curious about the naming scheme if we do have WP:RESEARCH -> Researching with Wikipedia and WP:Research be policy about conducting research, will people expect to find these two very different articles behind the similar names?  I propose two alternatives actions we could do:


 * 1) Leave WP:RESEARCH -> Researching with Wikipedia and fill policy at WP:Research.  Let readers figure it out.
 * 2) Disambiguate by adding a  page.  WP:RESEARCH -> WP:Research and place a disambiguation page there to point people to Research with Wikipedia and  Researching Wikipedia.
 * -- E POCH F AIL (talk 18:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It appears that WP:RESEARCH originally pointed at WP:OR, and in 2007 was discussed to change that redirect to WP:RES. There currently are about 10 places that link to WP:RESEARCH at the moment (the 11th being this page), so there's not a lot of use of it right now. I'd be in favor of RfD'ing it to point to WP:Research once we've got the policy up and approved, and seeing if there's any objections to it. -- PiperNigrum (hail&#124;scan) 19:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Pro-researcher bias
I was asked to comment on the proposal. I did a little editing, although I'm too busy right now to be an active crafter of this policy. My main observation is that right now there's a huge pro-researcher bias in the proposal/project. "Given as much data and users as possible"? That's pretty broad. And there are no statements of how the research should benefit Wikipedia itself or give back either to Wikipedia or the participants as a whole. -- ForteTuba (talk) 20:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * &diams; I agree (and have similar time limitations, unfortunately). I believe that non-researcher community members need to be brought into the process ASAP. --R27182818 (talk) 17:16, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Completed Section
Is this section for projects completed under this project? Bilalak (talk) 21:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam
HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research. —Wavelength (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

looking for research on new article fates
Hi, can you all direct me to any research on new article fates? Maybe
 * overall percentage deleted by some time point
 * number of PROD, SD, AFD and % outcomes
 * changes before/after AFC submission process was widespread
 * percentage acceptance of AFC submissions to new articles

Thanks in advance and I realize different people may structure the questions differently, so whatever is out there, appreciate it.

TCO (talk) 19:35, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikiproject proposal
I would like to invite this group to the discussion WikiProject Council/Proposals/Neutral Editors.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 02:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Exploring Editor Characteristics
As a strong research-oriented community, I'd greatly appreciate feedback/discussion from this community on the following proposal:

This grant would explore the gender gap through an intersectionality approach that contextualizes how group membership (i.e. identifying as female and an ethnic minority) and enactment of one's identity contribute to editing disparity. Are there user characteristics that make individuals more likely to edit on Wikipedia or edit more frequently and at higher volumes on Wikipedia?

In order to accurately explore the goals of the Inspire Campaign, we must characterize our community. Any interventions that we develop should reflect and match the needs of the target population, requiring a thorough understanding of the traits and behaviors of our editor community. As a direct extension of the recent gender gap research on Wikipedia, we’d like to conduct another study that uses a Talk Page posted survey to compare the traits of the super-editor, the active editor (moderate editing), and the inactive editor (infrequent edits). A more thorough description of the project can be found on the proposal page.Cshanesimpson (talk) 13:33, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

A couple of questions we've already run into:
 * 1)  How accurate are the Wikipedia editor rankings?
 * 2)  We'd like to explore beyond the English Wikipedia.  Are there suggestions about other Wikipedia's that have more robust activity?
 * 3)  As Wikipedians vary in demographic characteristics, any ideas about appropriate incentives for such a diverse community?  We've identified iPad's in the grant, but an online incentive would be much simpler to distribute (i.e. Amazon gift cards). Cshanesimpson (talk) 13:33, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank data?
I'm interesting in looking at how editors use the "Thank" feature for revisions. I haven't been able to figure out where this is stored using the data dump documentation. Anybody know where to find this information? Andrew327 20:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * (Belatedly) replied on your talk page. Retro  ( talk  &#124;  contribs ) 17:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Comment on the FAQ-Creation Research proposal
I'd greatly appreciate any discussion from the community on the following proposal:

We wish to study how editors create FAQ sections on a case-by-case basis to address recurring questions or misconceptions in talk pages that come up again and again. Challenges that editors face may include:


 * Determining if a specific topic warrants a FAQ section
 * Determining what the consensus answer to the question is
 * What supporting information to include into the FAQ answer
 * How to summarize a lengthy discussion into an FAQ answer

In response to these challenges, we'd like to speak with editors that have previously contributed to a FAQ section, and the experiences, challenges, and workarounds that they have found. We are developing tools that would assist editors that perform these tasks, and would like to invite Wikipedia editors to give their opinions on several ideas we have for these tools.

After a period of tool development, we'd like to invite selected editors to test our tools and provide feedback that we can use to improve and evaluate.

The project page can be found at User:ProbablyAndrewKuznetsov/FAQ-Creation-Research —Preceding undated comment added 18:48, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

New Research: Characterizing Existing Practices for Identifying and Mitigating Knowledge Gaps
Hi,

My name is Jim Maddock, and I’m with a researcher at Northwestern University working on identifying missing content on Wikipedia. As a first step, we want to talk to members of Wikipedia’s editor community to better understand how editors currently identify and add missing content. Participants must be Wikipedia editors who speak English and will be compensated for their time.

For more details about our project, please refer to our project meta page. If you are interested in participating, please fill out this screener and consent form. Additionally, feel free to reach out to me at maddock@u.northwestern.edu if you have any thoughts and suggestions. Thanks!

Study Information
Study Title: Characterizing Existing Practices for Identifying and Mitigating Knowledge Gaps

PI: Darren Gergle

IRB Study #: STU00212033

Cheers, Jmads-nu (talk) 16:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)