On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Dario Taraborelli < dtaraborelli@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/Archive...
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,