On 11/2/06, Piotr Konieczny piokon@post.pl wrote:
Dear all
First, I'd like to enquire if there is any progress with the General User Survey? Are there tasks for non-programmers to do? I think that we can always benefit from discussion about the questions itself.
Second, I'd appreciate any suggestions as to where one may publish an article about using wikis and Wikipedia as a teaching tool.
-- Best regards,
Piotr Konieczny
Thanks Piotr (and hello again :-))
Regarding the General User Survey, I'm not sure of what the status of technical considerations is. But as to questions themselves, anyone interested should go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_User_Survey/Questionnaire and see if what you are interested in is covered, or whether the questions there are phrased adequately. I think the _major_ other non-technical detail which needs to be worked out is the issue of sampling - how are we to ensure that this survey really does represent the "state of the wiki" (as was the motivation to do so)? How are we to ensure that we target newbies as well as seasoned wiki-editors? Or is this a survey for relatively experienced Wikimedians? Or is it simply a self-selected sample, where we take what we're "given"?
Regarding the essay on using Wikipedia in schools, I would be very happy to see it on Wikiversity - though, since we haven't yet decided on clear guidelines for what kind of research facilities Wikiversity provides for (nor, obviously, have they been approved), I can't give you a definitive answer on this. Where to put research has always been an ambiguous question - I hope Wikiversity will address it to a decent extent - and you're all more than welcome to help develop guidelines or add comments at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Research and related pages.
Cheers, Cormac