- Coordinator Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry is Wikimedian in Residence at the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, and gets salary. More information about such staff Wikimedian roles is at Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network.
- This project is part of the University of Virginia's Democracy Initiative described at https://democracyinitiative.virginia.edu/ . This participation is informal and there is no documentation, but Rasberry may report results at a future conference for this initiative. This affiliation introduces bias in favor of concepts in democracy.
- Student editing projects can introduce bias in many ways, including through the hundreds of complaints logged at en:Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. A Wiki Education Program coordinator wrote in a 2022 opinion piece in Wikipedia's newsletter, The Signpost, that despite the problems, the model of encouraging students to edit usually results in good outcomes.
- This project pays student editors as research assistants. Wikipedia regulates paid editing in en:Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure. Discuss on the talk page, but here are some reasons why this project is different from other paid editing projects:
- Almost all of the paid editing complaints at en:Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard are the promotion of products, services, organizations, or people. In this project, the topics are of general interest and do not particularly benefit any brand.
- All editors paid in this project are encouraged to provide balanced coverage, including seeking counterpoints to any perspectives, arguments from all sides, criticism and taboo information, and significant minority perspectives.
- This project applies university and academic ethics to the project. Many parts of university ethics are global and understandable by many. Additionally, to the extent that it fits, University of Virginia students are aware that they must uphold University of Virginia Honor, and that they have options for discussing ethical problems with this project with others at the university.
- This project has a grant from a major foundation. We are in the process of publishing the grant proposal.
Steps to ensuring quality and openness
- Before beginning a Wiki99 project’s editorial activity, organizers should list their funders publicly on their project home page.
- Researchers, editors, and fellow organizers will be vetted and informed of the importance of transparency.
- During the editing process, each sentence should be checked by at least one, and hopefully two people.
- Throughout the project, an open WikiEducation dashboard should be used to track and measure progress for each editor and for the project as a whole.
- After the project, the dashboard and home page should remain open in perpetuity, so as to make it easy to trace editorial activity back to its source.
- At least once during the project, a third-party expert should be brought in to evaluate the comprehensiveness of a Wiki99 project.
- All researchers, editors, and organizers involved in a Wiki99 project must disclose any potential conflicts of interest upfront. This includes financial interests, affiliations, or personal biases that might affect their work on Wikipedia articles. This information will be publicly accessible.
- Our projects hope to encompass a diverse set of interests. Where possible we hope to draw on different cultural, gender, geographic, and academic backgrounds to ensure a broad and balanced viewpoint on the subjects being edited.
- We will engage with the wider Wikipedia community and consider soliciting feedback from the public or other Wikipedia editors.
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