With the disclaimer that I've carried out surveys myself in the past, I
want to strongly dispute the claim that " Wikipedians were getting tired
of being continually contacted by researchers to fill out *surveys*". As
an editor who is in the Top 100 most active Wikipedians, I'd think I'd
get to see an above average number of requests, where I don't think I
get asked more than once a year. Maybe twice, in a "good" year, with
half not even on my talk page but something I see at WikiProjects I
frequent.
Even Heather says "I certainly haven't seen a huge amount of surveys
myself". I don't think anyone has seen any significant amount of surveys
(and what would be "huge"? would even getting one request a month be too
much, really?).
It is my belief that this type of discussion is driven by a very tiny
and completely unrepresentative group of editors who dislike
science/research and are very vocal about it (i.e. Wikipedia equivalent
of anti-vaccination activists), in other words people who may not get
more than one or two survey requests per year but for whom it is an
occasion to write long rants about how researchers are wasting
everyone's time. Seeing as not taking part in a survey takes a few
seconds of reading and forgetting about an invitation, I think that much
more time is wasted by giving any attention to such complains in the
first place.
Until such a time that someone can show that researchers are indeed
affecting the work of volunteers in any meaningful way (as in, imposing
on them more than asking for few seconds-a minute or two each year,
collectively) I believe this discussion is a storm in a teacup and,
indeed, a waste of our time.
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
Agree with Kerry that we really need to have a more
flexible process
that speaks to the main problem that (I think) RCOM was started to
solve i.e. that Wikipedians were getting tired of being continually
contacted by researchers to fill out *surveys*. I'm not sure where
feelings are about that right now (I certainly haven't seen a huge
amount of surveys myself) but I guess the big question right now is
whether RCOM is actually active or not. I must say that I was
surprised, Aaron, when I read that it is active because I had heard
from others in your team about a year or two ago that this wasn't
going to be the vehicle for obtaining permission going forward and
that a new, more lightweight process was being designed. As Nathan
discusses on the Wikimedia-l list, there aren't many indications that
RCOM is still active. Perhaps there has been a recent decision to
resuscitate it? If that's the case, let us know about it :) And then
we can discuss what needs to happen to build a good process.
One immediate requirement that I've been talking to others about is
finding ways of making the case to the WMF as a group of researchers
for the anonymization of country level data, for example. I've spoken
to a few researchers (and I myself made a request about a year ago
that hasn't been responded to) and it seems like some work is required
by the foundation to do this anonymisation but that there are a few of
us who would be really keen to use this data to produce research very
valuable to Wikipedia - especially from smaller language
versions/developing countries. Having an official process that
assesses how worthwhile this investment of time would be to the
Foundation would be a great idea, I think, but right now there seems
to be a general focus on the research that the Foundation does itself
rather than enabling researchers outside. I know how busy Aaron and
Dario (and others in the team) are so perhaps this requires a new
position to coordinate between researchers and Foundation resources?
Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are any
plans for RCOM that have been made by the research team and the only
people who can answer that are folks in the research team :)
Best,
Heather.
Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk> Doctoral Programme
EthnographyMatters <http://ethnographymatters.net> | Oxford Digital
Ethnography Group <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=115>
http://hblog.org <http://hblog.org/> | @hfordsa
<http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa>
On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
<mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>> wrote:
Yes, I meant the community/communities of WMF. But the authority
of the community derives from WMF, which chooses to delegate such
matters. I think that “advise” is a good word to use.
Kerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:*Amir E. Aharoni [mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il
<mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>]
*Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM
*To:* kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>;
Research into Wikimedia content and communities
*Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys
WMF does not "own" me as a contributor;
it does not decide who can
and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes.
I don't think that it really should be about WMF. The WMF
shouldn't enforce anything. The community can formulate good
practices for researchers and _advise_ community members not to
cooperate with researchers who don't follow these practices. Not
much more is needed.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-07-17 8:24 GMT+03:00 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
<mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>>:
Just saying here what I already put on the Talk page:
I am a little bothered by the opening sentence "This page
documents the process that researchers must follow before
asking Wikipedia contributors to participate in research
studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments."
WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who
can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. What WMF does
own is its communication channels to me as a contributor and
WMF has a right to control what occurs on those channels. Also
I think WMF probably should be concerned about both its
readers and its contributors being recruited through its
channels (as either might be being recruited). I think this
distinction should be made, e.g.
"This page documents the process that researchers must follow
if they wish to use Wikipedia's (WMF's?) communication
channels to recruit people to participate in research studies
such as surveys, interviews and experiments. Communication
channels include its mailing lists, its Project pages, Talk
pages, and User Talk pages [and whatever else I've forgotten]."
If researchers want to recruit WPians via non-WMF means, I
don’t think it’s any business of WMF’s. An example might be a
researcher who wanted to contact WPians via chapters or
thorgs; I would leave it for the chapter/thorg to decide if
they wanted to assist the researcher via their communication
channels.
Of course, the practical reality of it is that some
researchers (oblivious of WMF’s concerns in relation to
recruitment of WPians to research projects) will simply use
WMF’s channels without asking nicely first. Obviously we can
remove such requests on-wiki and follow up any email requests
with the commentary that this was not an approved request. In
my category of [whatever else I’ve forgotten], I guess there
are things like Facebook groups and any other social media
presence.
Also to be practical, if WMF is to have a process to vet
research surveys, I think it has to be sufficiently fast and
not be overly demanding to avoid the possibility of the
researcher giving up (“too hard to deal with these people”)
and simply spamming email, project pages, social media in the
hope of recruiting some participants regardless. That is, if
we make it too slow/hard to do the right thing, we effectively
encourage doing the wrong thing. Also, what value-add can we
give them to reward those who do the right thing? It’s nice to
have a carrot as well as a stick when it comes to onerous
processes J
Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we
perhaps do things to try to make the researcher feel part of
the community to make “giving back” more likely? For example,
could we give them a slot every now and again to talk about
their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage them to be on
this mailing list. Are we at a point where it might make sense
to organise a Wikipedia research conference to help build a
research community? Just thinking aloud here …
Kerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:*wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>
[mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>] *On
Behalf Of *Aaron Halfaker
*Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 6:59 AM
*To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities
*Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia
surveys
RCOM review is still alive and looking for new reviewers
(really, coordinators). Researchers can be directed to me or
Dario (dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org
<mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>) to be assigned a
reviewer. There is also a proposed policy on enwiki that
could use some eyeballs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<nemowiki(a)gmail.com <mailto:nemowiki@gmail.com>> wrote:
phoebe ayers, 16/07/2014 19:21:
(Personally, I think the answer should be to
resuscitate
RCOM, but
that's easy to say and harder to do!)
IMHO in the meanwhile the most useful thing folks can do is
subscribing
to the feed of new research pages:
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=atom&hidebots=1&hideredirs=1&limit=500&offset=&namespace=202>
It's easier to build a functioning RCOM out of an active
community of
"reviewers", than the other way round.
Nemo
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