Ethical considerations edit
As I am an occasional contributor and have met many Wikipedians off wiki, I am aware that I need to consider the impact that my research will have on editors, staff and people involved in the community. This will be a working statement, altered to reflect best practice in Internet Studies. I want to maintain a high ethical standard when acting as a participant observer in the community, and therefore welcome feedback. I will ensure that my research adheres to the following protocol in accordance with QUT's Code of Conduct:
- I will fully disclose myself as a researcher in my signature and on my user page, which will describe my project and also provide information on contacting QUT's ethics team.
- I will not include any personally identifiable information that I have gathered through participation in the Wikimedia community in my final dissertation without prior consent from those involved. Anything said in normal conversation remains confidential and to collect data I will follow procedure (see below). As Wikipedia is an open community, it is hard to make specific statements unidentifiable. As such if I am using extensive data from a particular user and cannot gain explicit consent for the use of this data in my thesis, I will not include it. However from time to time I will use openly published data from the site. If you want to opt out of my research, please see below.
- When communicating off-wiki in my capacity as a researcher, I will follow standard procedure for conducting interviews. This involves getting informed consent from participants and providing participants with the option to opt out of the research at any stage. Participants will also have the option to be identified or anonymous in my final thesis, and I will seek feedback from participants before the final thesis is submitted.
- Any editor I have interacted with as a participant observer will be free to opt-out of my research at any stage. Editors may contact me via my talk page, or privately through QUT.
- All the data I collect will be stored in an encrypted file in cloud storage and backed up on secure central QUT storage.
- I have approval from QUT's Research Ethics Committee with the Approval Number: 1300000771.
Wikipedia is an amazing and dynamic artefact that will be the object of study for many researchers well into the future. I endeavour to conduct my research in a way that respects Wikipedia as a community of editors and volunteers.