As you could see, for a long time, I am not active in this committee,
as I don't have anything particularly to add. Because of that, for a
month or so I was thinking to leave the committee. So, it's time to do
that.
I wish you all the best in the further work and don't hesitate to
contact me if you need my help.
The latest issue (February 2012) of the monthly Wikimedia Research Newsletter is out:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2012-02-27
In this issue:
1 Wikipedia research at CSCW 2012
1.1 Gender gap connected to conflict aversion and lower confidence among women
1.2 Making sense of NPOV
1.3 Public Policy Initiative motivated students to become Wikipedians
1.4 High-tempo contributions: Who edits breaking news articles?
1.5 How different kinds of leadership messages increase or decrease participation
1.6 Other CSCW 2012 contributions
2 Wikipedia discourse on Europe analyzed
3 The significance of the first edit
4 Given enough eyeballs, do articles become neutral?
5 Navigating conceptual maps of Wikipedia language editions
6 Briefly
7 References
••• 22 new items were covered in this issue •••
You can post suggestions and contributions for the next issue at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Newsletter
or by mail at researchnews(a)wikimedia.org
RSS feed for the newsletter: https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/research-2/wikimedia-research-newsletter/feed/
Best,
Dario
--
Dario Taraborelli, PhD
Senior Research Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://nitens.org/taraborelli
Please see the forwarded email. This is an extremely problematic situation
from my point of view, as even though this unapproved survey is only going
out to ~200 people, its text gives the notion that I as a staff person
approved it, not to mention the fact that it is being sent by a banned
editor. I did not receive any prior contact from Salsman about this before
he began to send emails out.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: Actual Inactive Wikipedia administrator survey (
swalling(a)wikimedia.org)
To: "James Salsman (Google Docs)" <jsalsman(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org>
Dear James,
Please do not continue to send out this survey as is. This is extremely
problematic for a variety of reasons:
First and foremost, as you are well aware, you did not ask me whether I
would like to sign my name as the point of contact for a survey. This
is disingenuous, as it implies that I had prior knowledge of the survey and
its questions. I did not, and I have already received emails directed at me
personally inquiring about the survey.
Second, and just as important, all surveys of Wikipedians that use special
methods such as mass emailing or talk page messaging not only should be
approved *in advance *by the Research
Committee<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee>,
a group of both Wikimedia Foundation staff, independent researchers, and
Wikimedians. This is to ensure that the vast number of researchers
interested in contacting editors do not abuse the trust of our community
(including ex-editors). I strongly urge you to seek RCOM approval before
going further, and have CC'd Dario Taraborelli, the Foundation point of
contact for RCOM.
Last, and definitely not least, running a successful survey is dependent on
the goodwill and cooperation of Wikipedians. As a user banned from English
Wikipedia, I do not think that the community would feel very comfortable
with you email hundreds of people through Wikipedia.
Once again, please halt surveying people until the consensus process
required by the community and the Research Committee has been followed and
the survey has been approved.
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:59 PM, James Salsman (Google Docs) <
jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I've shared Actual Inactive Wikipedia administrator survey<https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar3LgocyHQnfdG…>
> Message from jsalsman(a)gmail.com:
>
> Steven,
>
> Thanks for being the point of contact for this survey. The real "live" survey URL is http://j.mp/inactiveadminsurvey
>
> The responses are starting to come in (the first on Line 2 is my "test-ignore).
> Please let me know if you have any trouble reading the spreadsheet. I will summarize it with R in a week or two.
>
> I sent out probably exactly 99 emails (plus a test to me) from the first 112 of the 286 listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Former_administrators#Desysopped_for… but then I got email-throttled, so it looks like it will take the whole weekend to cover all on that list, which is the most I can hope for. The rest didn't have emails or set preferences to refuse email.
>
> This is easy enough I'm not going to ask for sysadmin help to BCC them all at once (but I'm not adverse to that if you want to ask around. The email text is below, and the next on the list is # 113, User:Jersyko.)
>
> Best regards,
> James Salsman
>
>
> --- email text ---
>
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail: inactive administrator survey
>
>
> Dear Wikipedia Administrator:
>
> Please respond to this survey: http://j.mp/inactiveadminsurvey
>
> A few years ago, the Wikimedia Strategic Planning Task Force on Community Health noted the troubling decline in administrator participation in the English Wikipedia and resolved to survey inactive administrators to identify the reasons that admins leave the project, in hopes that would help improve the associated issues. By mid-2010 a survey was drafted but resourcing and other issues prevented action until recently when a statistical analysis revealed a 96% chance that administrator inactivity is causing the decline in active English Wikipedia editors as a whole. Therefore, this survey is being distributed to you so that the reasons for administrator attrition can be better understood and acted on. Individual responses will be kept anonymous, but aggregate summaries will be published as soon as they are available. The goal of this research is to get broad, qualitative information about why administrators have stopped contributing, in hopes that we can use it to revitalize both the administrator and editor community.
>
> If you have questions, please reply by email to surveyrole(a)gmail.com or the Wikimedia Foundation Community editor retention point of contact for this survey, Steven Walling: swalling(a)wikimedia.org. The direct administration of this survey is being performed by a Community Health Task Force volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous at this time.
>
> Thank you very much for your service to the community and your help with this survey response.
>
>
> Click to open:
>
> - Actual Inactive Wikipedia administrator survey<https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar3LgocyHQnfdG…>
>
>
> Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents,
> spreadsheets and presentations.
> [image: Logo for Google Docs] <https://docs.google.com>
>
Thank you,
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
All,
I tweaked the HTML titles in the support template on Meta to make it more explicit what it means to label a proposal as, say, "SR" or "SR pending".
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AWMF-support&action=h…
A full explanation of each code is displayed, as usual, upon hovering over the icon.
tldr:
• I replaced "approved" with "reviewed" as we agreed that this is the most appropriate description of the role of RCom (i.e. we cannot give any kind of ultimate approval to a project: permissions to run a project can in principle be revoked at any time depending on several factors – community opposition, abuse, decision by WMF etc.)
• I specified that "pending" means that a proposal has not been reviewed by the RCom (that's the default used by all projects when their page is created: the icon is marked as yellow)
• I specified that removing the "pending" flag indicates that the project has been reviewed by RCom or WMF, the latter being for cases in which a project requires technical resources or access to private data held by the Foundation, which requires internal WMF approval. Removing the "pending" flag from this template marks the icon as green and a project as reviewed, so please be aware of this when you edit a project page.
Please let me know if you have any concern with the above changes.
Thanks
Dario