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Revision as of 19:08, 25 February 2011

Scholarly research of Wikipedia is useful for understanding the encyclopedia's content, readers, editors, history, current state, and future. These results also yield important knowledge applicable to other open content communities. In addition to driving scholarly knowledge of such systems, this work can also give results that can improve Wikipedia itself. Much valuable research cannot be done without Wikipedia community members who volunteer to participate in studies. This policy exists to further three goals:

  1. To allow important research of Wikipedia and its users to take place.
  2. To ensure that that individual community members' preferences on whether and how frequently they are invited to participate in research studies are respected.
  3. To ensure that research studies are respectful of participating community members and community norms.

This policy describes how researchers can recruit members via talk page postings and creates the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group (SRAG), a public discussion group, to control who will be allowed to make those postings. SRAG receives applications from researchers to recruit editors to participate in research and manages the public consensus process which considers them. If the recruitment is approved, a bot owned by SRAG (SubjectRecruitmentBot) contacts selected community members and invites them to participate. Each community member controls whether and how often the bot can contact him or her.

Scope

This policy pertains to the recruitment of Wikipedia users as subjects for research. Examples of these activities include surveys, interviews, and experiments.

Researchers

This section gives a brief overview of who researchers are and why they are interested in studying Wikipedia and its editors.

Who are they

There are a wide variety of backgrounds from which people approach studying Wikipedia.

  • Academics: the students, professors, and staff of colleges and universities
  • Industry researchers: the staff of private companies
  • Independents: individuals without an affiliation with an interest in studying Wikipedia

They are here to perform scientific analysis of Wikipedia and its users and, most often, intend to publish the results of their work in academic publications.

What do they do

In the past, research in Wikipedia has built an understanding of how Wikipedia works,[1] how editors interact with each other,[2] what work is discarded and why,[3] how admins are chosen,[4][5] and how to detect vandalism.[6][7] This research serves to increase understanding in how Wikipedia works and to improve its functioning. Researchers approach understanding Wikipedia in a few different ways.

  • Field experiment: Determines the limitations and strengths of Wikipedia's functionality or tests new functionality for editing, collaborating, navigating, etc., by developing and distributing modifications to Wikipedia's functionality. Field trials will usually need to recruit users under this policy.
  • Surveys and interviews: Learns various aspects of editors and editing (e.g. demographics, motivations, activities) using pre-written forms or back-and-forth conversations. Requests for participation can be either general (i.e. random), or targeted to specific editors. Requests for participation require sending unsolicited messages, so surveys and interviews frequently require recruitment under this policy.
  • Participant observation: Gains a close familiarity with the editing community by joining Wikipedia and doing the same work that Wikipedians do on a regular basis. They often casually converse with editors as a part of the collaborative editing process. Participant observers who do not send unsolicited requests do not usually fall under the SRAG's guidelines. However, they are recommended to disclose themselves as researchers and consult with the SRAG before starting their research project. In addition, participant observers who decide to interview or survey users need to recruit users under this policy.
  • Offline analysis: Analyzes database snapshots of publicly available information to examine the history of encyclopedia construction. Offline analyses will seldom need to recruit users under this policy.

Why are they here

Wikipedia is an interesting medium for scientific research. It is one of the most visited websites on the internet, serving as an information resource to millions of users every day.[8] Scientists find it remarkable that an encyclopedia in which articles can be edited by anyone anonymously, and in which damage can only be repaired after it occurs, has quality comparable to traditional encyclopedias.[9] They want to understand how the social dynamic of Wikipedia works. Further, Wikipedia is one of the few examples of millions of people working together on a single project. The Wikimedia Foundation also supports the work of researchers by maintaining a public mailing list devoted to scholarly research of Wikimedia projects and releasing periodic database snapshots for analysis.

Recruitment of research participants

Many types of interesting research are only possible with the ability to contact a random sample of community members to ask them to participate in a study. However, it is important to respect the wishes of Wikipedia community members on whether and how often they are contacted in this way. This section defines the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group to control recruitment message postings.

SRAG holds public discussions regarding applications to recruit community members. If a proposed research study finds consensus, SRAG will contact community members on behalf of the researchers.

As a rule of thumb, if a researcher wants to contact an individual with the intent of collecting data for use in a study, and that contact is unsolicited, he or she will need approval from SRAG. Specifically, a researcher must obtain SRAG approval to use tools within Wikipedia (e.g., talk page postings) to contact Wikipedia users when all of the following apply:

  • The communication would be the first by that researcher and the user (automated talk page postings by bot do not count as prior communication).
  • The message is not personal communication.
  • The message is not related directly to work on Wikipedia content, policy, or systems.
  • The user did not solicit the message.
  • The user is not a member of a WikiProject, work group, etc. managed by the researcher.
  • The user is not a current or recent participant in one of the researchers' studies.

Community members who have received a recruitment message have no obligation to participate in the study. Users who do not wish to receive subject recruitment messages will be able to opt out via template {{bots}} (for more information, see User:SubjectRecruitmentBot). Also, a bot-specific template allows for customization regarding the frequency or the number of studies to which a user would like to be recruited over a period of time.

Requirements for SRAG approval

Wikipedia and SRAG favor approving recruitment for studies that are of low risk to Wikipedia's editors and that are likely to benefit the community.

All approved recruitment must meet the following set of requirements:

  • The research must have merit, as deemed by the Wikipedia community. The benefits of performing the research will influence the approved sample size.
    • The research is designed to learn about communities like Wikipedia (wikis, open collaboration systems, mass collaboration, etc.)
    • The number of users approved for recruitment should be influenced by the potential value of the results of a study.
  • The nature of the study is adequately disclosed. All information that would be necessary for participants give informed consent to participate in a study has been made available.
    • Adequate information may not mean complete information. Many studies will require that the experimental design is not made public until after data gathering is completed due to the use of controls.
    • Subjects must know what they will need to do, what risks may exist, and how information about them will be stored and/or published.
  • The study will respect the preferences of community members and Wikipedia policy. The study will not unnecessarily make life difficult for community members – participating or not. The study must also respect the policies of Wikipedia and not cause undue harm to the system.
  • Results must be made freely available in a reasonable timespan. Specifically, this means that the results of a study must be either made freely available or submitted to a publication within two years of the start of recruitment.
    • If the results are submitted to a publication that requires a fee or membership to retrieve the results, the results (possibly rewritten to avoid copyright problems) must otherwise be made available for free within one month of the non-free publication.
    • It is possible to petition SRAG for extensions to these requirements.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Kittur, Aniket; et al (2007). Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie (PDF). alt.CHI at Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  2. ↑ Kittur, Aniket; et al (2007). "He Says, She Says: Conflict and Coordination in Wikipedia" (PDF). Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 1. ACM Press. pp. 453–462. ISBN 9781595935939. doi:10.1145/1240624.1240698. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  3. ↑ Halfaker, Aaron; et al (2009). "A jury of your peers: Quality experience and Ownership in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. International Symposium on Wikis. ACM Press. ISBN 9781605587301. doi:10.1145/1641309.1641332. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  4. ↑ Burke, Moira; et al (2008). "Taking Up the Mop: Identifying Future Wikipedia Administrators" (PDF). CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press. pp. 3441–3446. ISBN 978160558012X Check |isbn= value (help). doi:10.1145/1358628.1358871. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  5. ↑ Panciera, Katherine; et al (2009). "Wikipedians Are Born, Not Made". Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international conference on Supporting group work. Conference on Supporting Group Work. ACM Press. pp. 51–60. ISBN 9781605585000. doi:10.1145/1531674.1531682. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  6. ↑ Viégas, Fernanda; et al (2004). "Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations" (PDF). Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press. pp. 575–582. ISBN 1581137028. doi:10.1145/985692.985765. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  7. ↑ Priedhorsky, Reid; et al (2007). "Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work. Conference on Supporting Group Work. ACM Press. pp. 259–268. ISBN 9781595938459. doi:10.1145/1316624.1316663. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
  8. ↑ "694 Million People Currently Use the Internet Worldwide According To comScore Networks". comScore. 2006-05-04. Retrieved 2007-12-16. Wikipedia has emerged as a site that continues to increase in popularity, both globally and in the U.S. 
  9. ↑ Giles, Jim (2005). "Internet encyclopedias go head to head". Nature 438: 900–901. doi:10.1038/438900a.  Unknown parameter |month= ignored (|date= suggested) (help)
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