[Advocacy Advisors] community survey

[James Salsman]

Dear Federico:

Do you have time to re-do the European community survey, or know any
trusted community members who do? I am nowhere near Europe. Any
trusted community member can update the questionnaire, and I am sure
you could get volunteers to help translate it:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_User_Survey/Questionnaire

Furthermore, there are some pretty obvious reasons why anyone at the
Foundation or any Foundation-funded entity has a conflict of interest
when trying to administer such surveys, which manifests in ways which
we should try to reduce. The last time I tried to run a survey I was
accused of violating a proposal. That makes it much harder for me to
run another one than it would if you did. I am confident that the
permissions involved will be restored, because I am confident that the
Foundation will try to make amends for their mistake someday. It took
me about 60 hours for 330 enwiki administrators, but there were
complicated issues and questions to which I still have not received a
response.

Original: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey

16 proposed additions followed by the earlier list of 24:

1. Labor rights, e.g., linking to fixmyjob.com

2. Support the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the
Child and its protocols without reservation

3. Increase infrastructure spending

4. Increase education spending

5. Public school class size reduction

6. College subsidy with income-based repayment terms

7. More steeply progressive taxation

8. Negative interest on excess reserves

9. Telecommuting

10. Workweek length reduction

11. Single-payer health care

12. Renewable power purchase

13. Increased data center hardware power efficiency

14. Increased security against eavesdropping

15. Metropolitan broadband

16. Oppose monopolization of software, communications, publishing, and
finance industries

---

A. Open Access (Scientific Research)

B. Database Rights

C. Freedom of Information

D. Orphan Works

E. Broadband Internet Access

F. Data Protection

G. Human Rights

H. Freedom of Panorama

I. Open (Government) Data

J. Censorship

K. Copyright on Government Works

L. Internet Neutrality

M. Three-strikes laws

N. Cultural Heritage

O. Data Retention

P. Provider/Hoster Liability

Q. Copyright Enforcement

R. Geodata

S. Open Educational Resources

T. Software Patents

U. Research Funding

V. Surveillance

W. Public Broadcasting

X. Frequency Allocation

Justification from previous messages:

> Our advocacy orientation isn't well aligned with the issues that most
> affect Wikimedians at present, because previous surveys had ... flaws.

Would quantitative measures of how various proposed actions counter
threats to building and sharing free knowledge help?

For example, if someone makes a case that acting successfully on some
issue is likely to cause X additional hours of productive editor
contribution time than failing to act on it, and nobody disagrees with
the analysis, or, if the analysis is supported by reliable sources,
nobody is able to counter those sources or show that they aren't
applicable, then the Foundation could be obligated to at least open a
formal RFC on the topic, and at larger thresholds of X, for example,
point people to it with CentralNotice or watchlist notices etc.

A good specific example is the Comcast-Time Warner Cable issue. I
think we should act to avoid monopoly consolidation of internet
resources, and there are sources which measure the extent to which
monopolies result in additional rent-seeking which would tend to
exclude editors. But I'm not particularly motivated to ask for action
on it without some expectation of whether it is even worth it to try
to persuade people.

see also:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2014-February/000394.html

Best regards,
James Salsman