On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Dario Taraborelli <
dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
The request is sensitive not only for its tight
timeline (there was
apparently a commitment to get the banner campaign started today and the
team has already allocated engineers to this project next week), but also
because it would be the first time ever that we use the CentralNotice for
research projects, and this is a decision that may have implications for
future studies.
I'd like to have your thoughts on this proposal via its discussion page *by Monday
night (Pacific time)* at the latest. I am particularly interested in
hearing on this from community members (such as Ziko, WereSpielChequers,
Milos, Steven).
Because of her direct involvement in the project, Mayo won't be
participating in the discussion.
I attach below a letter that Jérôme addressed to the Research Committee to
document the history of this project.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best
Dario
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and…
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archiv…
Hi everyone,
As a preliminary comment about approval of such a request, I wanted to
reiterate that English Wikipedia community members commented in favor of the
idea of briefly running a banner, as an alternative to the initial idea of
using talk page messages. It should be acceptable if we notify people
beforehand and point to that discussion.
I also spoke today with the folks who ran our fundraising banners and the
recent WMF survey, and confirmed the following things
1. *When*: Based on our schedule and the lull in community banners after
the Board election, etc. it is much better to get something up sooner rather
than later. The longer we wait the more conflicts there may be. I am
proposed we should run it starting on Tuesday, July 5th, and I and Philippe
Beaudette can handle implementing the campaign for the sake of simplicity.
2. *For how long and at what capacity: *The WMF editor survey received
about 1,000 responses a day running at 100% capacity, with 600 or so of
those being totally clean, usable responses. That suggests we don't need to
run any banner more than a week, and that ideally for study it should run
about 20% for that week (to logged in users only, as stated before). That
capacity will give the study a wider range of responses from timezones,
rather than all of the response being from one geography. 20% will also
reduce the impact on the community.
3. *What*: The banner design that was attached is generally just fine,
but the current text of the proposed banner is:
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University - Sciences Po
Paris
Please help advance research by participating in a quick online experiment
[That is the link.]
You can gain up to $50 from your participation and decide to donate them to
the Wikimedia Foundation if you wish to do so
That amount of text needs to be reduced for usability reasons -- at many
common browser sizes almost all of the text would not be visible. As
alternate I'm proposing:
Please help with a quick online experiment by Wikipedia researchers.
You can gain up to $50 for your participation and can donate it if you
choose.
Whatever variation we use, that's a large amount of text already for an
effective banner, so less it more.
As for future cases, I think we can take this opportunity to draft a policy
for similar requests going forward, which I would suggest begins with a
requirement for community approval prior to running any survey for external
researchers. I think this case is special since we have such a close
relationship with the research team already, plus several Wikipedians
encouraged them to run a banner to meet their needs.
Thanks,
--
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org