The controversy over Berkman is not in my view primarily a communication issue and it certainly isn't about the legitimacy of that survey. I believe that the community trusts RCom as a regulator of research to know whether research is legitimate or not.<br>
<br>A big part of the controversy is over advertising, and I'm not convinced that you can design a banner ad for a third party research survey that isn't seen by some as advertising for that third party. An Omnibus survey could be a Wikimedia one and therefore I would argue an internal ad rather than a third party one. Perhaps that isn't our only option, and maybe there are alternative ways to solve that, one way would be to change policy to allow advertising for bona fide research. But that would be a difficult one to sell to the community, particularly on the heels of a fundraising drive where "Wikipedia doesn't take ads" was a core message. <br>
<br>The other aspect of being a regulator of research is the issue of how we control the amount of research requests made to the community. To my mind that is fundamental to what we should be doing, and it is a major reason for my being on this committee. But this is almost an opposite thought process to "promoting research".<br>
<br>There are two proposals that I've made as to how we do this, one would be to contact everyone once a year with an Omnibus survey, the other rather more complex one is to throttle back research surveying by volume and limit each campaign to a small subset of the community. The two approaches can be hybridised by rewarding institutions that collaborate by allowing them to use our systems to approach a larger proportion of editors. One reason why I was opposed to the Berkman survey was that it was the worst of both worlds - one single research project going to all or almost all of our most surveyed community.<br>
<br> I'm not convinced that the community currently has confidence in RCom to regulate
the amount of research requests that wikimedians and especially English
language Wikipedians are exposed to. Nor am I convinced that everyone on this committee regards that as our responsibility. To my mind this gives us a couple of possibilities, one would be to try and agree a mechanism for limiting the amount of surveying that Wikimedians are subjected to, and then sell that to the community via a request for comment. One option in any such request for comment could be for the
community to agree not to put any constraints on researchers, but I'd be
surprised if that option got consensus however strongly it was promoted by some members of RCom. The other possibility would be to clarify that the remit of this committee is to promote legitimate research by vetting proposals and otherwise communicating with the community; and to inform the community that if it wants to put constraints on legitimate researchers contacting wikimedians via the site then it needs a an additional process other than RCom. <br>
<br>WereSpielChequers<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 12 December 2011 18:50, Diederik van Liere <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dvanliere@gmail.com">dvanliere@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Dear WSC,</div><div><br></div><div>I think we need to be very precise about what the Berkman controversy is about. My understanding is that the use of banners with logo's on central notice during the fundraiser and the kickback of donations is at the heart of the controversy. It is not about the legitimacy of the research institutes, nor is it about surveys as a research methodology, or the actual research questions. As such, I think that we need to discus how to to promote research studies but not debate the merits of Wikipedia research itself.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Best</div><div><br></div><div>Diederik<br><br>Sent from use my iPhone</div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><div><br>On 2011-12-12, at 13:30, WereSpielChequers <<a href="mailto:werespielchequers@gmail.com" target="_blank">werespielchequers@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br></div><div><span></span></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>I'm comfortable with a meeting next week, but I think that the community and our research partners will want to hear something in the meantime. There would also be a benefit if we could hold some on wiki discussions as to the Omnibus survey or any other option.<br>
<br>Clearly one of our options would be to run an RFC to seek consent of the EN wiki community for us to resume Berkman and run similar things in the future. But even if we promised some sort of vanilla advert for it I doubt we would get consensus or anything close.<br>
<br>We could probably get consensus for an opt in research system so that those who wanted to could subscribe to some sort of research mailing list of questionnaires. But I don't think that opt in would give us the volume that researchers are likely to want and I fear we'd have skews.<br>
<br>If anyone can think of an alternative option I would suggest creating a draft such as I have at <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Omnibus_Survey" target="_blank">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Omnibus_Survey</a> so that we and the community can consider it.<br>
<br>Another way to defuse current tension would be for Rcomm to invite a couple of the people who have been arguing against the Berkman survey to join us in our meeting next week.<br><br>Regards<br><br>WSC<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On 12 December 2011 17:52, Dario Taraborelli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">Hi WSC,<div><br></div><div>thanks for starting this, I agree we need to have a serious assessment of what happened with the Berkman incident and discuss alternative options (if any) for the future.</div>
<div>I suggest that we hold an extraordinary RCom meeting some time next week to discuss these measures since we have other SR requests on hold.</div><div><br></div><div>If nobody objects I am going to start a doodle to find a date that suits most of us (cc:ing Dana). It'd be great if those among you heavily invested in SR discussions/reviews could make it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Dario<br><div><br></div><div><div><div><div></div><div><div>On Dec 12, 2011, at 6:50 AM, WereSpielChequers wrote:</div><br></div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div></div><div>
Dear All,<br><br>After the rather hostile response on the English language wikipedia to the Berkman survey I would like to revive my proposal from five months ago for an annual Omnibus survey. <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Omnibus_Survey" target="_blank">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Omnibus_Survey</a><br>
<br>I appreciate that this would put some constraints on the researchers and would actually cost the Foundation a bit of money. But unless someone else can come up with an alternative way of fairly throttling research surveys to the point where the community can accept them, I would suggest that this is the only viable option on the table other than a simple blanket ban on third party research surveys.<br>
<br>Regards<br><br>WereSpielChequers<br></div></div>
_______________________________________________<br>RCom-l mailing list<br><a href="mailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a><br><a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l" target="_blank">https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
RCom-l mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a><br>
<a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l" target="_blank">https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>
</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>RCom-l mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org" target="_blank">RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a></span><br>
<span><a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l" target="_blank">https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
RCom-l mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org">RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org</a><br>
<a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l" target="_blank">https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>