Research talk:Data introduction

Missing data sources?

Are there data sources that are linked on Research:Data that have not been included on this new page, but which you think should be added? My goal was to include the most continuously updated and/or authoritative sources in each data domain, but I also don't want to leave out unique or interesting data sources. TBurmeister (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but the onus is on you to explain specifically which information you want to delete from Research:Data, and why. The current version of that page is the result of efforts many different people over more than a decade. Granted, this doesn't meant that you have to agree with their decisions or that you are prohibited from removing their work. But doing so without providing any rationale might be considered disrespectful, and (civility issues aside) is also not likely to be a process that is optimal for determining what content is most useful to readers of that page. (It appears you are a Wikipedian yourself, so perhaps it helps to review w:WP:PRESERVE or recognize the fact that a "Blow it up and start over" approach is usually reserved for severely deficient articles there.) And while there could be parts that are genuinely outdated, that seems a bit less likely considering that your colleague Andre already did an extensive rewrite less than two years ago (and, by the way, did a much better job at explaining specific removals and changes using edit summaries).

Just to illustrate that this is not a theoretical concern, or that I'm not raising it merely out of principle: It appears that you plan to delete all pointers to third-party datasets (and dataset search engines), i.e. those not provided by the Wikimedia Foundation. I disagree with that change and will revert it if needed. There are many such datasets that are in fact of great interest to researchers (I just happened to cover one in the new issue of the research newsletter). More generally, I would ask you to be mindful of the fact that this is a community wiki and that the purpose of a page such as Research:Data should be to document what is useful for researchers to know about this topic - rather than, say, "What are the Wikimedia Foundation's opinions and offerings related to this topic".

And besides removals of particular datasets and links, this also concerns textual content. Again, just to illustrate the general point, one small example: A while ago I added the clickstream dataset to R:Data, with a brief description of what it actually consists of (excerpted from the linked full documentation page, akin to w:WP:SUMMARY), because I think that the name will not be self-explanatory to many readers. Evidently you disagree, considering that you deleted that description in your version. Fine, we can discuss that, but you should transparently flag such removals and provide your rationale, instead of putting the onus on others to find them and ask you about your reasons.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)