Proposal:Supporting researchers of Wikimedia projects

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The status of this proposal is:
Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

Every proposal should be tied to one of the strategic priorities below.

Edit this page to help identify the priorities related to this proposal!


  1. Achieve continued growth in readership
  2. Focus on quality content
  3. Increase Participation
  4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
  5. Encourage Innovation



Summary

The WMF could take several steps to make Wikimedia content and data more accessible to those researching the projects. This is desirable to help increase the quality of basic research that is undertaken, which in turn hopefully helps us better understand how the projects work, and how they can improve.

Proposal

Various aspects of researcher support could include:

  • making Wikipedia/Wikimedia dumps more readily accessible
  • offering access to the toolserver or mirroring data to another, similar, research-specific server that could be used for querying the database on a large scale
  • mirroring data to a server that extensions could be tested on, or making wikimedia labs accessible for tests (does this already happen?)
  • developing how-to material and best practices for researchers, particularly researchers who would like to interact with community members

Motivation

to come


Key Questions

to come


Potential Costs

to come


References

The idea for this proposal was based on several conversations with active researchers.

This needs a great deal of input both from practicing researchers and from tech staff.



Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:Supporting researchers of Wikimedia projects.

Want to work on this proposal?

  1. .. Sign your name here!