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Research Scientist 🔥


We’re hiring a Research Scientist strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge, open source and open data, transparency, privacy, and collaboration to join the Research team [1] to conduct applied research on the integrity of content [2] and disinformation in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. We’re accepting applications until August 31st with a start date by, or before, November 15th.

The surge of coordinated disinformation campaigns to infiltrate, disrupt, and co-opt movements, communities, and platforms is an important challenge for the integrity of the content in Wikimedia projects. At the same time, humans and machines rely on Wikipedia as a neutral arbiter of reliable information on the Web. Preserving the reliability of Wikipedia’s knowledge is therefore key in ensuring the integrity of the information propagating in the broader web.

You’ll work remotely with a distributed team, with members spread between Europe and North America.  Here are some things we’ve worked on recently that might give you a better sense of what you could be working on:

  • Studying how content propagates across different Wikipedia languages [3], by predicting, given an article created in one language, what is the next language that will have the same article created.
  • Modeling content inconsistencies [4] between Wikimedia projects by aligning Wikidata [5] statements to sentences in Wikipedia articles through natural language processing techniques.
  • Designing algorithms to identify malicious actors such as sockpuppets [6], by detecting clusters of users behaving similarly.
  • Building a model to detect unsourced content [7] in Wikipedia using machine learning, through neural network classifiers that can detect sentences needing citations based on their content. (paper [8])
  • Using qualitative methods to study Wikimedia communities and their patrolling techniques, [9] to discover inner mechanisms of editor workflows to combat disinformation.

You can learn more about what we have done in the past six month by reading our biannual report [10].

You will be responsible for:

  • Contributing to the three directions of the team: addressing knowledge gaps [11] on the Wikimedia projects, supporting the Wikimedia volunteers in improving content integrity [12], and building a more global community of Wikimedia researchers [13] with a particular focus on improving content integrity and disinformation
  • Collaborating with other researchers, Wikimedia volunteers, and teams within the Wikimedia Foundation, including Legal [14]Trust and Safety [15], and Security [16] teams to define disinformation and content integrity related research projects
  • Designing and executing experiments to collect labeled data, large-scale data analysis and/or modeling and evaluation of machine learning methods
  • Discussing, documenting and communicating the process and results of your research publicly
  • Actively engaging in a collaborative, consensus-oriented environment and as part of a globally-distributed team and organization
  • Elevating the importance of critical open research questions as well as nurturing and growing the global network of Wikimedia researchers
  • Providing research consulting to the teams in the Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates, and the Wikimedia volunteers

Skills and experience:

  • PhD or MSc degree plus 1-2 years of related work experience in computer science, statistics, or related technical fields; PhD degree highly preferred
  • Strong experience in Machine Learning and at least one of the following fields: Natural Language Processing, Algorithm Design, Social Network Analysis, HCI, Behavioral/ Experimental Economics, Computational Social Science; experience with disinformation research highly preferred.
  • Programming experience in Python, Scala, or C++
  • Experience with Hadoop and any of the following related technologies: HDFS, YARN, MapReduce, Hive, Spark, etc.
  • Contributions to research communities and research initiatives including publishing in relevant conferences and journals, organizing academic workshops
  • Strong written and oral communication skills in English, including the ability to communicate complex technical issues to a cross-team and cross-functional audience

Qualities that are important to us:

  • Commitment to the mission [17] of the organization and our values [18]
  • Commitment to our guiding principles [19]
  • Ability to disagree in a respectful manner and yet work towards a solution even when you disagree
  • Good at async communication
  • Solutions-focused. The Wikimedia ecosystem is complex, resources are limited, and our guiding principles are ambitious. We want you to work to find solutions embracing these factors.
  • Self motivated with an Ability to navigate through ambiguity and bring a project to completion with limited directions
  • Curiosity and commitment to learn

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

  • Relevant work experience in the field of disinformation, in academia or industry
  • Experience with large-scale experiments in online platforms
  • Experience with mixed methods research
  • A strong record of scholarly publications
  • Experience as a program committee member, senior program committee member, track chair, or editor in related conferences and journals
  • Experience with tools such as Spark, Flink, Hive, Kafka
  • Deep knowledge of the Wikimedia ecosystem and the working of the projects and/or experience with volunteer or open source communities

  1. https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
  2. https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-integrity.html
  3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Discovering_content_inconsistencies_between_Wikidata_and_Wikipedia
  4. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploration_on_content_propagation_across_Wikimedia_projects
  5. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
  6. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Sockpuppet_detection_in_Wikimedia_projects
  7. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Patrolling_on_Wikipedia/Report
  8. https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.11116
  9. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Patrolling_on_Wikipedia/Report
  10. https://research.wikimedia.org/report.html
  11. https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-gaps.html
  12. https://research.wikimedia.org/knowledge-integrity.html
  13. https://research.wikimedia.org/foundational.html
  14. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal
  15. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trust_and_Safety
  16. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Security_Team
  17. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/#:~:text=The%20mission%20of%20the%20Wikimedia,disseminate%20it%20effectively%20and%20globally.
  18. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/values/
  19. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles

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