On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Agree with Kerry that we really need to have a more
flexible process that
speaks to the main problem that (I think) RCOM was started to solve i.e.
that Wikipedians were getting tired of being continually contacted by
researchers to fill out *surveys*.
That's correct, afaik that was the original motivation, along with some of
the concerns that Lane/Nathan raised in the other list -- i.e. that it was
difficult for contributors to tell if a survey was ethical, vetted, etc.
Frankly, I think some long-term contributors just felt jaded -- for a while
it seemed there were lots of surveys and studies to try to find out things
that seemed intuitively obvious if you were a participant in the community.
I think Heather is right that it seems like there have been fewer surveys
in recent years, for whatever reason.
Part of the problem is a somewhat subtle demographic one: while
contributors to Wikipedia do turn over, so newer contributors will not
necessarily have seen lots of surveys, very heavy editors and admins (who
are often easier to identify) tend to be long-term participants who might
have been surveyed many times. Additionally, the people who follow mailing
lists, social media, etc. (or at least the people who speak up on those
channels) skew towards very-long-term contributors who have strong opinions
and have seen it all before. So, if you advertise your survey on the
mailing list, that's the population you get, and that's the feedback you
get. (But it's a catch-22; there's not really other obvious mass channels).
Anyway, this is a hard problem without super-obvious solutions, and not one
that there's a lot of models for -- very few online projects are
simultaneously as open with their data and as interesting for research
purposes!
best,
Phoebe
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