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