IRC office hours/2009-12-08

eekim: hi everyone

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey eekim

[10:01pm] FloNight: hi

[10:01pm] harej joined the chat room.

[10:02pm] aude: hi

[10:02pm] harej: Have you considered that many people are turned off by the prospect of having their work subject to the administrative whims of teenagers with poor social skills?

[10:02pm] FloNight: Philippe|Wiki: Community heath is meeting here again at the same time this coming Thursday.

[10:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: Oh, i'll just put it back up then FloNight <grin>

[10:03pm] FloNight:

[10:03pm] jimmyps joined the chat room.

[10:03pm] eekim: harej, i must have missed the context for that statement

[10:04pm] Amgine: Mmm, I mentioned office hours in #Wikimedia.

[10:04pm] harej: the English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) has an inconsistent administration, quick to punish and destroy and not being able to communicate well

[10:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: Thanks, Amgine. I hadn't gotten there yet.

[10:04pm] harej: And they are also inconsistent.

[10:04pm] zscout370 joined the chat room.

[10:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: ....so, FloNight, you wanna talk about Community Health? Seems a good intro to me... <grin>

[10:04pm] Amgine: harej: That would be an element of community health, yes, and yes it's being considered.

[10:05pm] harej: How do you consider the basic social framework of a given group? How would you tell the English Wikipedia to change, especially since they are extremely reticent to change?

[10:05pm] LauraHale: harej: That's not confined to just English Wikipedia.

[10:05pm] harej: Of course not, but I know about it especially from English Wikipedia.

[10:05pm] eekim: those are excellent questions. how would you do that?

[10:06pm] NuclearWarfare joined the chat room.

[10:06pm] harej: I'm not expecting my tax dollars to go towards the solving of impossible questions. What do you feel you have accomplished in any case?

[10:06pm] Philippe|Wiki: ...tax dollars?

[10:06pm] harej: Figure of speech.

[10:06pm] jimmyps: change and inconsistency are the same thing. Consensus, some facts, and administrators themselves can change

[10:06pm] Philippe|Wiki: You've mentioned that before, harej. I'm curious about why you think there are tax dollars involved.

[10:07pm] eekim: hard, but not impossible

[10:07pm] harej: Philippe|Wiki, strictly a figure of speech.

[10:07pm] LauraHale: http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf <-- Case Study: Fan History’s Proposal For Being Acquired by the WMF incompatible encoding

[10:07pm] eekim: many, many examples of large-scale social change that are much harder than what we're facing

[10:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: LauraHale: I saw your article about that, on the strategy wiki... thanks for that.

[10:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: It's very helpful

[10:07pm] eekim: two quick examples

[10:07pm] eekim: environment can shift social behavior

[10:08pm] mindspillage joined the chat room.

[10:08pm] eekim: which is why the work of the Community Health task force has been so interesting and why the Question of the Week is so relevant

[10:08pm] eekim: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Question_of_the_week

[10:08pm] harej: jimmyps, the inconsistency isn't so much between old guard and reformists, but one shitty way of doing something with another shitty way of doing something.

[10:08pm] • FloNight listening

[10:10pm] jimmyps: harej: I agree, but I think parts of your earlier statement are misleading. I have seen a huge improvement in the efforts to communicate, even with speedies from Newpages, lately. I never thought I'd see the day so many people have been trying to address that ... collection of stubs

[10:10pm] eekim: Wikia is doing great work in showing how changes in the tool can lead to more positive social behavior

[10:10pm] eekim: one example: http://blueoxen.com/blog/2009/04/the-incredible-power-of-welcoming/

[10:11pm] peteforsyth left the chat room.

[10:11pm] harej: jimmyps, have these improvements manifested in the form of changing the canned statements we issue to everyone who "whistles at a white woman" so to speak?

[10:11pm] eekim: the Foundation fundraiser is finding that adding "Please read" to its message results in much higher responses

[10:11pm] jimmyps: harej: I do not understand what you are asking

[10:12pm] harej: I'm not talking about the fundraising messages

[10:12pm] Amgine: Assertion: Structured communities develop strictures in part to control membership within the community.

[10:12pm] harej: I'm talking about the templated messages.

[10:12pm] harej: "Please don't vandalize" and so forth

[10:13pm] harej: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_warnings << These.

[10:13pm] jimmyps: harej: I think there's been a huge improvement there.

[10:13pm] harej: A huge improvement when?

[10:14pm] jimmyps: well, about three years ago, the "don't template the regulars" meta-template caused a chain reaction, a lot of people saw it, and started thinking about how impersonal templates were

[10:14pm] eekim: there are great real world case studies showing how the right language can help prevent vandalism

[10:14pm] jimmyps: I personally added "Please" and "Thank you" to about a dozen talk page templates

[10:14pm] eekim: Adopt-A-Highway being the classic example

[10:14pm] LauraHale: eekim: The Wikia numbers appear misleading as they seem to imply correlation equals causation with out any evidence to support that.

[10:15pm] harej: jimmyps, I agree that "don't template the regulars" sentiment is absurd. They're good enough to be used on 99% of Wikipedia editors but not the top 1%.

[10:15pm] Risker joined the chat room.

[10:15pm] jimmyps: I've also been trying to lower the contrast of the boxes that say things are archived when they actually haven't been yet for low contrast vision users (like, um, me in the sunlight...), work on self-contradictions like that

[10:16pm] eekim: LauraHale: Where are you getting that?

[10:16pm] LauraHale: http://blueoxen.com/blog/2009/04/the-incredible-power-of-welcoming/

[10:16pm] eekim: i know the link. i'm trying to understand how you're drawing that conclusion.

[10:16pm] LauraHale: The bulleted points seem to imply relationships.

[10:16pm] harej: jimmyps, I am aware of attempts to overhaul the system. From years ago. Are you speaking of modern improvements or those from ~2006?

[10:16pm] LauraHale: I'm not seeing any connection between increase in participation and welcoming.

[10:17pm] LauraHale: "Clearly, a simple and timely Welcome message is playing a huge role in increasing participation from newcomers." Where do the stats support that?

[10:17pm] jimmyps: okay, but this weeks question are about technology, and templates are kind of low-tech. We could do much better with the tallest bars on eekim's graph using statistics

[10:17pm] eekim: it was as close to a controlled experiment as you can get. there were no new feature changes, also no patterns based on long-term usage

[10:17pm] jimmyps: this week's question is*

[10:17pm] apergos joined the chat room.

[10:17pm] NuclearWarfare is now known as NW|away.

[10:17pm] Philippe|Wiki: Hey apergos

[10:18pm] apergos: yo. just lurking

[10:18pm] LauraHale: eekim: It isn't that controlled. Too many variables and correlation still doesn't equal causation.

[10:18pm] eekim: say more, jimmyps

[10:18pm] Philippe|Wiki: lurk away if you like, but you're smart and should talk, apergos

[10:18pm] jimmyps: LauraHale: the statistics are linked from the welcoming committee talk page or archives. Someone counted ~30 new users who had and had not been welcomed and the welcomed ones were more prolific

[10:19pm] Amgine: Question of the week is: "What changes to Wikimedia's technology would enable a friendlier and more welcoming environment?"

[10:19pm] LauraHale: jimmyps: 30 isn't what I would consider a particularly large sample.

[10:19pm] Philippe|Wiki: LauraHale: It's anecdotal, but one of the most frequent comments that I get on strategy is how much people like the welcome.

[10:19pm] harej: Amgine, civil service exams for all administrators

[10:20pm] Philippe|Wiki: Including one person who griped cuz it was templated, but then realized it was templated because of the translations linked.

[10:20pm] LauraHale: Philippe|Wiki: If I wanted a study about that, AboutUs and wikiHow have done much larger ones about that.

[10:20pm] eekim: LauraHale: the Wikia sample size was significantly greater than 30

[10:20pm] jimmyps: we could address the first two (tallest) bars on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png simply by publicising statistics from http://stats.grok.se

[10:20pm] eekim: on welcoming?

[10:20pm] Amgine: harej: Cool idea! not quite in the field of technology changes, but still an interesting one.

[10:20pm] Philippe|Wiki: jimmyps: Interesting point.

[10:20pm] jimmyps: and it could be done automatically, with some kind of a "related links" system on the sidebar after the interwikis

[10:21pm] LauraHale: eekim: The post you linked to didn't address other dependent variables such as the overall increase in traffic, which can account for an increase in the number of contributors.

[10:21pm] eekim: jimmyps: the key question is, how would you publicize it, and how would you measure if you were being effective?

[10:21pm] Amgine: There is, actually, a tool to automagically welcome users to a MW website.

[10:21pm] eekim: LauraHale: my post was a minor one. danny normalized the stats. i can hook you up with him if you want more data.

[10:21pm] LauraHale: eekim: I like data so feel free. I'd be interested.

[10:22pm] Philippe|Wiki: Amgine: Assuming you can get anyone to install it for you

[10:22pm] Philippe|Wiki: I've had a request open forevers.

[10:22pm] Amgine: Yes. Wikinews has a request on the books for 3 months now.

[10:22pm] eekim: LauraHale: did i hear you right about AboutUs and WikiHow doing similar studies on welcoming?

[10:22pm] LauraHale: eekim: They did them and presented them at RecentChangesCamp.

[10:22pm] LauraHale: One or the other at least.

[10:22pm] jimmyps: eekim: easy, for each article find the top 10 articles also in its categories and list them in order on the sidebar after the interwikis with "x,xxx views/month" right-justified on every other line after each of the 10

[10:23pm] jimmyps: that would indicate to people the most popular subjects that they are also interested in

[10:23pm] jimmyps: this could be done in batch mode

[10:23pm] LauraHale: wikiHow does a lot of wiki behavior related research. They're pretty open with sharing it. (Jack Herrick is pretty awesome.)

[10:23pm] eekim: i know Jack well

[10:23pm] eekim: do you have links?

[10:23pm] Keegan joined the chat room.

[10:23pm] Philippe|Wiki: Hey Keegan

[10:24pm] LauraHale: I don't have links. I just remember that they did a panel at RecentChangesCamp about it that Nicole Wilson told me about.

[10:24pm] FloNight: LauraHale: I've been reviewing studies about on line communities, and other volunteer organizations. And good welcomes fit in with the type of stuff that brings people in to stay.

[10:24pm] Keegan: Here I am, rock you like a hurricane

[10:24pm] Keegan: Hi, Philippe

[10:24pm] Keegan: Hi, FloNight

[10:24pm] Philippe|Wiki: University of Tulsa Golden Hurricanes, baby.

[10:24pm] FloNight: hi Keegan

[10:24pm] eekim: one other thing to note about community analytics

[10:24pm] eekim: the important thing is not scientific validity

[10:24pm] Keegan: Hi, eekim

[10:24pm] eekim: the important thing is evaluation and results

[10:24pm] eekim: hey keegan

[10:25pm] Amgine: hull keegan

[10:25pm] eekim: this is why evaluation is so critical

[10:25pm] Amgine: o

[10:25pm] LauraHale: The important thing to do is place them into context for the community. What works on Wikia may not work on wikipedia or elsewhere.

[10:25pm] Keegan: Amgine, go take care of wikt mail

[10:25pm] Amgine: <gg> Did it all today. Twice.

[10:25pm] eekim: LauraHale: that furthers my point

[10:25pm] eekim: everyone needs to do their own evaluations

[10:25pm] jimmyps: does anyone disagree that listing the most popular "related articles" with their viewership counts on the sidebar after the interwikis would address the largest leftmost two bars on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png ?

[10:26pm] eekim: try and measure, try and measure

[10:26pm] eekim: rinse and repeat

[10:26pm] LauraHale: I have an educational background where they like matched pairs for the point of examining progress. We're doing welcoming messages on Fan History and off hand, I am pretty sure that behavior patterns have not changes.

[10:26pm] eekim: my point, jimmyps, is to judge your question based on results, not on opinions

[10:26pm] LauraHale: But that's more of a case of why people are incentivized to edit. That changes from wiki to wiki.

[10:26pm] eekim: in other words, try it, and see if it works

[10:26pm] jimmyps: eekim: good thinking. There is only one way to find out

[10:27pm] Amgine: <grr> bad development model eekim. Observe, theorize, model, intervention.

[10:27pm] Amgine: (rinse, repeat)

[10:27pm] apergos: human interaction was the reason I stayed around. sure, that's anecdotal. but it is evidence.

[10:27pm] jimmyps: Amgine: observation is indistinguishable from interaction (Heisenberg)

[10:27pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: same here

[10:28pm] eekim: LauraHale: did registered accounts go up?

[10:28pm] harej: jimmyps, that only applies at a very very small scale

[10:28pm] LauraHale: eekim: No.

[10:28pm] apergos: I would like a way to convert anon passers by into regular contributors (whether anon or not)

[10:28pm] jimmyps: harej: it applies in the social sciences to. People who know they are being watched behave differently

[10:28pm] apergos: by smart tech use

[10:28pm] FloNight: I think we need to learn from other on line communities and other mainstream volunteer organizations.

[10:28pm] eekim: another change Wikia made was to make the "Save" button appear "above the fold" in the browser

[10:29pm] eekim: that resulted in a big boost in edit/save ratio (people clicking on Save after clicking on Edit)

[10:29pm] LauraHale: Our change was we fixed things to make things work.

[10:29pm] eekim: apergos, hear, hear

[10:29pm] eekim: FloNight, absolutely

[10:29pm] LauraHale: Wikia was also reporting major increases for traffic. The methodology or results needs to take that into account.

[10:29pm] FloNight: While its possible that wikimedia projects are different enough that nothing is the same, I think that it is more likely that similar organizational structures and process will work.

[10:30pm] eekim: LauraHale, as I said before, the data was normalized

[10:30pm] LauraHale: FloNight: I don't know that wikinews and Wikipedia feel all that similar.

[10:30pm] LauraHale: eekim: Sorry if I keep missing that. I know you said that and I keep forgetting or getting the other wikia news stuck in my brain.

[10:31pm] eekim: LauraHale, no worries

[10:31pm] eekim: it's late in your part of town

[10:31pm] apergos: I wonder if some smart extension could suggest anotehr page or two for editing to the anonymous editor

[10:31pm] jimmyps: I think we are more similar to news-gathering organizations than any other kind. How does the New York Times protect its journalistic integrity? Publishing corrections. On Wikimedia projects, we do that a lot more

[10:31pm] apergos: maybe just typos (spell checking ain't that hard)

[10:31pm] eekim: FloNight, i hope that one recommendation that comes out of the Task Force process is to build an evaluation framework so we can actually test those hypotheses rather than guess

[10:32pm] apergos: but something to get em to do another edit or two

[10:32pm] eekim: apergos, great idea

[10:32pm] apergos: course, we have the vandals,, but let;s ignore that for now

[10:32pm] Amgine: apergos: Andrew built something related to that.

[10:32pm] harej: jimmyps, Wikipedia is also the most self-deprecating publication I've ever seen. No other medium of information posts stickers all over the place on how much its text sucks.

[10:32pm] jimmyps: LauraHale: collecting primary sources feels very different than collecting secondary sources, but not completely different

[10:32pm] Amgine: Not sure if it ever was formalized into an extension.

[10:32pm] eekim: harej, interesting point

[10:32pm] Philippe|Wiki: Interesting, harej

[10:32pm] eekim: apergos, the extension should lead the vandals to a honeypot

[10:33pm] LauraHale: jimmyps: Look at the procedural guidelines for Wikipedia vs. Wikinews and the culture around it. I get the feeling that there are class issues where other projects feel secondary to Wikipedia.

[10:33pm] apergos: that might be beonyd our capabilities unless we watch the revert patterns, have trust metrics for those that do the reverts, etc. etc. prolly too much work

[10:33pm] LauraHale: Which is like being from Chicago. It screws your thinking.

[10:33pm] jimmyps: harej: people who don't understand how much room there is for improvements are more unlikely to make them

[10:34pm] LauraHale: The institutional structure has to be there to allow them to make changes if they identify them.

[10:34pm] apergos: dude, live in an "outer borough" in NYC... talk about inferiority complexes

[10:34pm] eekim: LauraHale, definitely true

[10:34pm] harej: apergos, is that a cheap shot at me?

[10:34pm] eekim: the Expanding Content task force needs a kick in the rear

[10:34pm] apergos: but it's objectively true that most resources go to pedia, and go to en pedia

[10:35pm] apergos: (no, I lived in Queens for 6 years. I hated the then mayor every minute of it; he was all Manhattan all the time. )

[10:35pm] FloNight: eekim: I agree. Formal evaluation is a missing element in decision making on most wikis.

[10:35pm] Philippe|Wiki: ...it's also objectively true that the en:pedia is by far the largest project.

[10:35pm] harej: apergos, you must like Bloomberg then

[10:35pm] harej: Or liked.

[10:35pm] apergos: nope

[10:35pm] apergos: I was gone by then

[10:35pm] harej: He has/had a "five boroughs" plan

[10:35pm] apergos: yes, it is the largest project

[10:36pm] apergos: so we can continue giving it most of the resources

[10:36pm] apergos: and then we will have "the rich get richer"

[10:36pm] NW|away is now known as NuclearWarfare.

[10:36pm] harej: should Wikimedia serve as a welfare state for the non-big projects?

[10:37pm] apergos: en pedia started as a small project

[10:37pm] LauraHale: I wrote my recommendations.

[10:37pm] Philippe|Wiki: ...and managed to grow big

[10:37pm] Philippe|Wiki: (for the record: i support small projects, I'm playing devil's advocate)

[10:37pm] eekim: harej, i think it would help if we tried to articulate what the "cost" is of supporting small projects

[10:37pm] • LauraHale can't kick more than offering her project up as a case study, pretty much knowing from the onset it wasn't going to ever happen.

[10:37pm] apergos: it's not like the other projects started at the same time or on a level playing field

[10:37pm] Amgine: Philippe|Wiki: The big projects don't need the support: they have inertia to carry them through Plus name.

[10:38pm] Amgine: They'll do fine *without* attention.

[10:38pm] eekim: Apache Software Foundation, for example, has a pretty rigorous process for both starting and ending new projects, and they do much of both

[10:38pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim: you wanna talk more about that? i think it's fascinating.

[10:38pm] harej: That's why, Amgine, I suggest that the WMF be a welfare state only to the small projects, just as Michael Bloomberg doesn't qualify for Medicaid.

[10:38pm] eekim: i think activity should be one of the metrics

[10:38pm] eekim: however, you have to be careful

[10:38pm] Philippe|Wiki: harej: The WMF or Wikipedia?

[10:39pm] harej: The WMF is the one with the financial infrastructure

[10:39pm] Philippe|Wiki: 'kay. Just wanted to be sure I understood

[10:39pm] jimmyps: LauraHale: the difference between 'pedia and 'news could be just that it's so much easier for volunteers to find secondary sources

[10:39pm] Amgine: Not so much financial as support.

[10:39pm] LauraHale: The problem with small projects is that while WMF may say "Be our home," WMF might not offer what those projects need.

[10:39pm] eekim: for example, the numbers on our QOTW last week were a bit misleading: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Question_of_the_week_(achived_2009-11-30)

[10:40pm] eekim: Korean Wikipedia, for example, "only" has 600 active contributors

[10:40pm] LauraHale: jimmyps: I wouldn't ever edit on wikinews because the rules feel even more restrictive than Wikipedia to edit in a non-contributor friendly way. I thought about using them to model our own policies after and just no.

[10:41pm] jimmyps: well presumably you want a model of more well-established online communities but we're out of those

[10:41pm] Amgine: en.Wikinews has good history about that, LauraHale.

[10:41pm] eekim: that pales in comparison to English Wikipedia's 44,000 active contributors, but by encyclopedic standards, that's fantastic

[10:41pm] harej: LauraHale, how are Wikinews's policies more strict?

[10:41pm] eekim: and by online community standards, 600 active contributors is also outstanding

[10:41pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim: Define "encyclopedic standards", though. Nobody's ever done encyclopedic standards with an editing body this size.

[10:41pm] Amgine: They started with a very restrictive development-to-publishing model. It didn't work at small scale, so they threw it out and started an open model.

[10:41pm] Amgine: That worked very well, contributorship soared.

[10:42pm] Amgine: But quality suffered.

[10:42pm] eekim: Amgine, Korean Wikipedia?

[10:42pm] Amgine: en.Wikinews

[10:42pm] Amgine: So slowly instruction creep has restored a restricted development model.

[10:42pm] Amgine: And contributorship has plummeted.

[10:43pm] Amgine: (as compared with traffic)

[10:43pm] eekim: Philippe|Wiki: Brittanica has 4,000 contributors

[10:43pm] Philippe|Wiki: REALLY?

[10:43pm] Philippe|Wiki: wow.

[10:43pm] eekim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica

[10:44pm] LauraHale: I'm looking for the page on wikinews but it felt restrictive.

[10:44pm] eekim: for smaller encyclopedias, several hundred contributors is pretty standard

[10:44pm] • apergos wishes

[10:44pm] jimmyps: they mostly have Ph.D.s or M.D.s or J.D.s too, but don't hold that against them

[10:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: huh. who knew? If only we had an encyclopedia to turn to in order to learn that kind of stuff.... some sort of open content, freely edited thing...

[10:44pm] eekim: apergos, do you know the numbers for Greek Wikipedia offhand?

[10:44pm] apergos: 50 maybe

[10:44pm] apergos: regulars.

[10:45pm] eekim: i think 50 is pretty damn good

[10:45pm] apergos: those aren't regular = every day.

[10:45pm] eekim: every month?

[10:45pm] apergos: I should run numbers

[10:45pm] apergos: I would guess every 2 weeks

[10:45pm] eekim: jimmyps, fair enough

[10:46pm] apergos: but I should actually look at rc and count.

[10:46pm] eekim: i'm sure they're in erik's stats

[10:46pm] Amgine: eekim: my partner has a couple entries in an encyclopedia. I'm trying to get their guidelines now.

[10:46pm] Amgine: <partner is one of those people with alphabet soup after name>

[10:47pm] LauraHale: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Writing_an_article <-- That is what I felt made wikinews seem restrictive.

[10:47pm] Amgine: Thanks LauraHale.

[10:47pm] Amgine: I'll pass that along....

[10:47pm] eekim: i wrote several articles for the Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History about a decade ago

[10:47pm] apergos: it is small enough that persistent vandalism can be tiring to the people who deal with it (substantially less than 50. 10? )

[10:47pm] eekim: apergos, very good point

[10:47pm] LauraHale: I looked at it when developing http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Help:Be_a_Fan_History_Reporter and it wasn't a particularly useful resource for modeling.

[10:48pm] eekim: the quality control process in my experience wasn't that high

[10:48pm] apergos: you know, the anon passerby doesn't even know there is such a thing as recent changes

[10:48pm] eekim: they were really reliant on your "established" expertise

[10:48pm] apergos: they would have no idea what to do after that one edit which they probably did because they got there form a google search

[10:48pm] apergos: (it would be nice to track that somehow)

[10:49pm] eekim: another thing we need to measure!

[10:49pm] apergos: they almost surely did not see the main page which has all the nice info abou thow the project is open and anyone can edit and please do and here is a pile of suggestions.

[10:50pm] Philippe|Wiki: Yeah, I'd love to see real numbers on how many unique contributors didn't come in through the main page....

[10:50pm] LauraHale: The whole concept that a page can be edited can be a big hurdle.

[10:50pm] apergos: oh it sure is

[10:51pm] eekim: absolutely

[10:51pm] apergos: converting the reader who searched into an editor is a whole other huge deal

[10:51pm] Amgine: I haven't seen "you have a security problem" report in a while though.

[10:51pm] Philippe|Wiki: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Reader_Conversion

[10:51pm] Philippe|Wiki: (shameless plug)

[10:51pm] apergos: I really want a phase of the usability project to focus on that piece

[10:52pm] apergos: ie. a grant to do exactly that work.

[10:52pm] harej left the chat room. ("I am a finance industry regulator, and Windows Vista was my idea.")

[10:52pm] FloNight: Many people come because of a specific interest. Often something related to them.

[10:52pm] jimmyps: I've placed a request for a feasability evaluation for the "most popular related articles" idea at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Most_popular_related_articles -- I'll try to put it in the Answers of the Week unless someone in bot-land finds something wrong with it

[10:52pm] eekim: apergos, we've got to figure out a way to make that feasible

[10:52pm] eekim: money is certainly a start

[10:52pm] apergos: money means we can get people to work on it: studies, code, etc.

[10:53pm] eekim: jimmyps, that would be wonderful

[10:53pm] apergos: right now the usability team has $ for specific tasks, that's not one of them

[10:53pm] LauraHale: http://wikirank.com/en <-- Populat articles

[10:53pm] apergos: ie it's not covered in the grant.

[10:53pm] eekim: apergos, that's right, and it's a problem

[10:53pm] eekim: i've been working with Bridgespan to articulate this exact problem

[10:54pm] apergos: what is their role in it?

[10:54pm] eekim: restricted grants often don't account for infrastructure

[10:54pm] eekim: interviewing staff to make sure these problems are captured

[10:54pm] eekim: would love it if you chatted with them

[10:55pm] apergos: (my impression was just that they were targeting a different part of the process, making things easier for the person who has decided to make an edit, rather than making it obvious to non-editors that the possibility exists)

[10:55pm] jimmyps: eekim: did anyone apply for those big-money NSF grants like http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09602/nsf09602.htm?govDel=USNSF_25 yet? Less than a month left on that one!

[10:55pm] apergos: sure, if they want to talk with me about something, that's fine

[10:55pm] Philippe|Wiki: jimmyps: We don't currently have a grant writing team

[10:56pm] eekim: they're covering all of the important strategic priorities, of which Reader Conversion is one

[10:56pm] aude: i think the overhead involved with government grants is too high for the foundation

[10:56pm] aude: that's what i've heard

[10:56pm] eekim: yes, government grants are a major pain in the rear

[10:56pm] jimmyps: Philippe|Wiki: I am told all you need is a DUNS number, a paragraph abstract, the answers to about 7 pages of questions, and a good reputation

[10:56pm] aude: they can go after grants, with organizations like the ford foundation

[10:56pm] eekim: i did an NSF grant a few years ago

[10:56pm] eekim: not fun

[10:56pm] Amgine: Philippe|Wiki: look up :[:[grant tenure]].

[10:56pm] aude: money is not the problem, but having the capacity to execute grants is the bottleneck

[10:57pm] Philippe|Wiki: jimmyps: It's wayyyy more than that. Take it from one who worked for a group that managed those

[10:57pm] eekim: jimmyps, no, they have their own accounting process that is super complicated

[10:57pm] Philippe|Wiki: Amgine: Ain't no such thing

[10:57pm] aude: i have worked on the government side of the grant process, giving out money, but still we expected a bit of financial reporting and project reporting

[10:57pm] Philippe|Wiki: "You may create the page "Grant tenure", but consider checking the search results below to see whether it is already covered"

[10:57pm] FloNight: Philippe, eekim: Exit interview for leaving contributors?

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: Want.

[10:58pm] aude: it's not that terrible, but still substantial to do a government grant,

[10:58pm] Amgine: <snickers>

[10:58pm] aude: not worth it if there are other funding opportunities

[10:58pm] eekim: FloNight, Howie's talking with werdna tomorrow morning about getting a list of leaving contributors

[10:58pm] eekim: hopefully, we can get a survey out by next week

[10:58pm] FloNight: ok

[10:58pm] eekim: he'll update the group in the next few days once he talks to werdna

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim, that's "left" contributors. But yeah. FloNight, I think the questions will be up tomorrow. They're linked from one of the pages now.

[10:59pm] FloNight: Great

[10:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: Heh, FloNight, they're linked from YOUR task force's page.

[10:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: Check LQT

[10:59pm] LauraHale left the chat room.

[11:01pm] jimmyps: guys, I think you've never seen how the NSF FastLane system works, plus, look at the instructions on http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09602/nsf09602.htm?govDel=USNSF_25#prep -- scroll down to the "Project description" -- 7 pages is fine, you could probably do it in 4 just as easily. You don't have an "Institutional Review Board" that you need to ask for human subject approval, so it's an easy $5,000,000 per applicatio

[11:01pm] eekim: jimmyps, i've used FastLane

[11:01pm] eekim: it's not the application process

[11:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: Yeah, jimmyps, Eekim's right. It's the management once you've GOT the money.

[11:01pm] eekim: it's the process once you get the grant

[11:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: It's a compliance nightmare.

[11:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: That's why the company that I worked for managed them for people. For a significant chunk o' change.

[11:02pm] eekim: yes, there are entire companies devoted to simply managing government contracts

[11:02pm] eekim: very lucrative

[11:02pm] Amgine: Mmm, if you don't have an IRB I believe you're required to hire an outside review.

[11:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: And, depending on the research to be done, we actually might need an IRB

[11:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: ...which is ugly. I fear it

[11:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: (... as an IRB certified compliance professional)

[11:03pm] jimmyps: compliance with what? They want "Projects that study scale-up of STEM education innovations" (STEM=science technology engineering & math) so name one organization in the world who is more well-qualified to do that

[11:03pm] eekim: operational and financial compliance

[11:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: Compliance with their financial requirements and reporting requirements. I'll be happy to talk to you about it off this meeting if you'd like.

[11:04pm] apergos: I read that as "I'll be happy to talk you out of it after this meeting"

[11:04pm] eekim:

[11:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: Nah, I'd really be happy to share my info. But the truth here is... we don't have the staff to support the compliance rules.

[11:05pm] FloNight: Philippe|Wiki: There are ways around us dong the paper work, if we collaborate with another organization.

[11:05pm] eekim: FloNight, absolutely

[11:05pm] eekim: and we need to consider those possibilities

[11:05pm] eekim: Ed Chi has talked to us about this possibility

[11:05pm] eekim: (of PARC)

[11:05pm] Amgine: It could be managed, but it isn't something the structure of WMF seems particularly apt for.

[11:06pm] jimmyps: you do not need an IRB, or to hire outside review! You just designate Godwin as your "IRB Administrator" and give him veto power over your mad science and your golden. Did you even look into this? It is all clearly documented in http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08203/nsf08203_7.pdf

[11:06pm] jimmyps: and you're golden*

[11:06pm] FloNight: jimmyps: I really is not that easy

[11:06pm] JC is now known as JC|AFK.

[11:06pm] JC|AFK is now known as JC|bbl.

[11:07pm] jimmyps: FloNight: Have you read the Expedited Review Guide?

[11:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: IRB Administrators can usually not be employed by the organization unless they're "arms length", which Godwin clearly isn't.

[11:07pm] jimmyps: that's not what it says

[11:07pm] Amgine: jimmyps: ever seen a government audit?

[11:07pm] apergos: maybe we can discuss this at another time (if this session is supposed to be for a specific question)?

[11:07pm] eekim: thanks, apergos

[11:07pm] eekim: sadly, i need to run

[11:07pm] apergos: perhaps there should be a dedicated irc hour for grants

[11:07pm] jimmyps: hear, hear!

[11:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: As do I... this is the end of a 16 hour day for me...

[11:07pm] eekim: this has been a really good session

[11:08pm] Philippe|Wiki: But I'd love to do an IRC hour on grants

[11:08pm] eekim: thank you all for joining!

[11:08pm] eekim: i think sara crouse is going to do an office hours soon

[11:08pm] Philippe|Wiki: jimmyps: If you'll email me (philippe@wikimedia.org) I'll set something up, or connect you with Sara

[11:08pm] jimmyps: will do

[11:08pm] Philippe|Wiki: and make sure you know about it

[11:08pm] eekim: don't forget to check out the Question of the Week and the other content on strategy

[11:08pm] eekim: thanks everyone!

[11:09pm] eekim: see you on the wiki!

[11:09pm] FloNight: bye

[11:09pm] Philippe|Wiki: *** END LOG ***