Research talk:A game of tome: Gamifying the experience of Wikipedia writing

Latest comment: 4 years ago by EpochFail

@Deryck Chan: Please see this page. 恐狼博士 (talk) 03:36, 30 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Halfak (WMF): UNSW requires a formal letter of approval from WMF for their ethics approvals process. How can we arrange this? Deryck C. 09:04, 30 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Deryck Chan: It seems to be taking them very long... 恐狼博士 (talk) 09:34, 15 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Halfak (WMF): Dear Halfak, it has been quite long and we still haven't received any reply. We would really appreciate it if we could get an approval letter quickly, which is unlikely to cost much time. 恐狼博士 (talk) 13:55, 17 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hello 恐狼博士. I'm sorry for the delay. Somehow I missed your earlier ping. We don't provide formal letters approving the activities of researchers on Wikipedia. In fact, there's no real relevant aparatus at the Wikimedia Foundation for reviewing and approving research studies at all. Instead, I advise researchers for how to approach Wikipedians themselves about their studies. See User:EpochFail for my volunteer account. --Halfak (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 19 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
OK so first, it sounds like your academic institution thinks they need a letter from the Wikimedia Foundation. But the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't have authority over Wikipedia editors. I'd be interested in having a conversation with the administrators of your ethics process about the complexities of running studies in Wikipedia if you think that would be helpful.
Second, it's really not clear to me what you would expect editors to do and what information you might ask from them. I see that you are asking for more than 120 editors to participate in your experiment. I can't imagine any way that would happen. Why do you need such a high number?
Finally, the best way to get approval from the Wikipedia editors for running a study like this is to describe it clearly (here I'm struggling to work out what you would expect editors to do) and then to post about the study on one of Wikipedia's central forums to ask for feedback. Generally, Wikipedians tend to be welcoming of studies that provide new exciting tools for them to use (which it seems like you are in the process of developing). I think that providing some screenshots or other examples of what your bot would do might help Wikipedians understand what is all involved. --EpochFail (talk) 21:15, 19 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
@EpochFail:
First of all, my institution has a template form to be signed by relevant authorities from outside organizations involved in a research. I think all we need is a signature from someone in Wikipedia Foundation.
The sample size is 120 because we want our statistical analysis to have good power. However, we are not "asking for editors to participate", because we plan to obtain our sample by having one of our research cooperators recruit Cantonese-speaking participants in Hong Kong, teach them to edit Wikipedia, and then measure their behaviors from that point on. In fact, retention rate is a variable we are likely to consider for our analysis. Thus, we are not requesting extant editors to be involved in the research.
Noted. I will further polish the descriptions. 恐狼博士 (talk) 07:18, 21 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Halfak (WMF) and EpochFail:
I have just completed revising the research descriptions. I hope it makes procedures of our studies clearer. If Wikipedia Foundation is willing to approve the study, all we need is a signature from a WF authority on a designated form (which we will provide), to state that WF approves this study.
As I said earlier, "the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't have authority over Wikipedia editors" so it is not possible for someone to sign anything and "approve" the study. The way I recommend you proceed is to post on zh-yue:Wikipedia:城市論壇 -- which it looks like you're already doing -- and link to this document here to see if anyone objects to your study. This is the closest to an approval process that we have formalized. --EpochFail (talk) 21:13, 25 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
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