 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Researchers must first describe their research project and recruitment strategy (as explained below) and obtain consensus for their activities before mass messaging users. |
This page documents the process that researchers should follow before asking Wikipedia contributors to participate in research studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments. Researchers must first describe their research project and proposed recruitment strategy (as explained below) and obtain consensus from the Wikipedia community for their activities before mass messaging users. This process exists because researchers have a great demand for research participants which the Wikipedia community is unable to meet, and so researchers are requested design their studies to be thoughtful and minimally invasive when they recruit the time of volunteers here.
Scholarly research of Wikipedia is useful for understanding the encyclopedia's content, readers, editors, history, current state, and future. These results also yield important knowledge applicable to other open content communities. In addition to driving scholarly knowledge of such systems, this work can also give results that improve Wikipedia itself. Much valuable research cannot be done without Wikipedia editors who volunteer to participate in studies by being interviewed, taking surveys or testing experimental interfaces. This policy describes an interface between academic researchers and Wikipedia editors that does the following:
- allows the Wikimedia community to control recruitment campaigns from researchers looking for study participants
- affords legitimacy to researchers whose plans are successfully vetted by the Wikipedia community