Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments/Professional Journals

Professional Journals
Similar breaching experiments of Wikipedia have been published in professional journals, or have received considerable (and sometimes positive) coverage from popular media. The references for these breaching experiments are used as citations in the article Reliability of Wikipedia, as notable measurements and indications of Wikipedia's reliability. I do believe that breaching experiments, under controlled conditions, are the only way to test certain aspects of Wikipedia's reliability. However, because misinformation harms real people, research ethics mandate that any breaching experiments be performed in a way that includes a carefully thought-out attempt to minimize incidental damage to the integrity of the wiki. I don't think this was done here. For example, the attempt to transform the fabricated article into a DYK probably led to the misinformation being gratuitously broadcasted to more people than was necessary.

On this particular wiki, we've already got a proposed policy that could be interpreted as prohibiting Wikiversity from hosting any "breaching experiments" of Wikipedia--No shrines for vandals. It seems to me that just as Wikiversity should not protect, sanction, glorify etc. the people who disrupt it, it should also not sanction or glorify the people who disrupt its sister projects. This could include recognizing people who commit blockable offenses on Wikipedia as some of its "original researchers," with the offenses being the "research." At this stage in its development, Wikiversity's research is largely informal, and Wikiversity lacks an organized system of peer review for researchers to receive ethical and scientific feedback on their experiments. This, I believe, is a major shortcoming of our research facilities. Ideally, the experiment should have been recognized as a problem while the research was still taking place, by fellow members of the Wikiversity community who were giving it feedback. For example, in addition to the ethical problems discussed above, I also believe there were several scientific problems with the research, such as the lack of discernible controls and clearly-articulated hypotheses. In the absence of an organized system of research review and feedback, certain other policies such as "No shrines for vandals" probably need to be strengthened to prohibit the misconduct here. There is an ongoing discussion about developing a Original research policy, and this type of clause would also fit within its scope. --AFriedman 05:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: I've made some changes to No shrines for vandals and Deletion policy, and proposed making similar changes to Original research. Any thoughts about these changes?  --AFriedman (talk) 17:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Your changes to deletion policy could be a bit stronger -- it isn't that "Wikipedia and sister projects" should be specially protected. And this debate points to broader issues with OR and research projects -- research into the different ways people learn and teach, and neutral secondary research (which are within scope) are quite different from original research such as writing up the results of novel chemistry experiments (better suited for a journal submission) or running sociology experiments (which further have ethical, peer review, and other problems).  There are some interesting examples of original research on WV, but it's not one of the project's strengths.   –SJ + > 06:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think some types of research are within and others out of scope. While you can not do a chemistry experiment on WV (since this is done in the lab) you can still include the documentation of the methodology here. The exact and precise methodology allows also other people to repeat your experiment which is on of the core issues in research (i.e. repeatability). So the original research is for me within scope. The social experiments are in a way a special category as in this case we (the people) are the lab rats. This could be a controversial issue, which may lead to problems. The current case is the best example. It is up to us to take up the challenge to face these problems, but personally I would not exclude these "by definition". I am not even sure if you would mention social experiments if we would talk about the issue before this discussion about deletions. Maybe yes, maybe no... --Gbaor 08:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The question of what sorts of original research are appropriate for Wikiversity is open; related policies are still drafts, and a review board was never set up. Original research has never been the primary goal of Wikiversity, and has been a source of controversy and debate since the project was founded.  A similar case in which 'research on wiki ethics' was combined with some amount of trolling took place in 2008.  Then as now, there was possible harm or nuisance to others as a result of a research project... this seems like an easy case to rule out under current guidelines, but defining what 'do no harm' means can be tricky.  –SJ + > 14:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My colleagues and I at University of Canberra have been discussing our desire to establish an open journal for publishing original research. I would like to see Wikiversity in the list of platform considerations. As it is now, we have set up a portal on Wikiversity for one of the education and research institutions within the University of Canberra, and our thought was to publish research on Wikiversity as it relates to this institution. --Leighblackall 05:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)