Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia/to-do list

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Here's a brief list of tasks that should probably be done to get things rolling. Please add, remove, rearrange, and comment! See also the list of ongoing/future studies.

  1. Collect data
  2. Identify new sources of data
    • solicit intervention ideas that may be beneficial and that can be rigorously tested.
    • discuss the kinds of research that can be done without any attention from developers and the kinds that can't.
  3. Identify uses of data
    • define medium-term (3-5 year) and long-term challenges WP faces that could be addressed more effectively with better information.
    • create or link to a discussion of research methodologies. (i envision the research in this project to use the scientific method, but this should be discussed.)
    • one extremely valuable tool for research is the controlled experiment. write or link to pages on experimental methods; flesh out and give examples of controlled experiments that could be run on wikipedia.
    • start adding specific research projects or studies within this WikiProject; create a template for new projects (methods, key question/hypothesis, data needed, data analysis plans, implications of results for academic theories/ for wikipedia design/redesign). essentially, these pages (which ought to reside in the project space rather than the encyclopedia space) will look like research proposals.
    • describe how research on wikipedia fits in with existing research topics in established academic fields.
  4. Expand this project
    • seek out other potential contributors to the project.
    • standardize ways of getting feedback from the broader community about research proposals.
  5. Move the project to meta:Research oder meta:Wikimedia Research Team where it belongs -- Nichtich 07:09, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, meta:Wikimedia Research Network needs to be differentiated from this group. See project talk page. here 23:02, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Connect with new research communities
    • Target OLPC schools who are using Wikipedia content in the classroom and interested in related studies (sometimes running very local studies of their own)
    • Target classes already using Wikipedia in high school and college to teach critical thinking, collaborative process, and information design