With the disclaimer that I've carried out surveys myself in the past, I want to strongly dispute the claim that " Wikipedians were getting tired of being continually contacted by researchers to fill out *surveys*". As an editor who is in the Top 100 most active Wikipedians, I'd think I'd get to see an above average number of requests, where I don't think I get asked more than once a year. Maybe twice, in a "good" year, with half not even on my talk page but something I see at WikiProjects I frequent.
Even Heather says "I certainly haven't seen a huge amount of surveys myself". I don't think anyone has seen any significant amount of surveys (and what would be "huge"? would even getting one request a month be too much, really?).
It is my belief that this type of discussion is driven by a very tiny and completely unrepresentative group of editors who dislike science/research and are very vocal about it (i.e. Wikipedia equivalent of anti-vaccination activists), in other words people who may not get more than one or two survey requests per year but for whom it is an occasion to write long rants about how researchers are wasting everyone's time. Seeing as not taking part in a survey takes a few seconds of reading and forgetting about an invitation, I think that much more time is wasted by giving any attention to such complains in the first place.
Until such a time that someone can show that researchers are indeed affecting the work of volunteers in any meaningful way (as in, imposing on them more than asking for few seconds-a minute or two each year, collectively) I believe this discussion is a storm in a teacup and, indeed, a waste of our time.
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
On 7/17/2014 18:38, Heather Ford 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*. I'm not sure where feelings are about that right now (I certainly haven't seen a huge amount of surveys myself) but I guess the big question right now is whether RCOM is actually active or not. I must say that I was surprised, Aaron, when I read that it is active because I had heard from others in your team about a year or two ago that this wasn't going to be the vehicle for obtaining permission going forward and that a new, more lightweight process was being designed. As Nathan discusses on the Wikimedia-l list, there aren't many indications that RCOM is still active. Perhaps there has been a recent decision to resuscitate it? If that's the case, let us know about it :) And then we can discuss what needs to happen to build a good process.
One immediate requirement that I've been talking to others about is finding ways of making the case to the WMF as a group of researchers for the anonymization of country level data, for example. I've spoken to a few researchers (and I myself made a request about a year ago that hasn't been responded to) and it seems like some work is required by the foundation to do this anonymisation but that there are a few of us who would be really keen to use this data to produce research very valuable to Wikipedia - especially from smaller language versions/developing countries. Having an official process that assesses how worthwhile this investment of time would be to the Foundation would be a great idea, I think, but right now there seems to be a general focus on the research that the Foundation does itself rather than enabling researchers outside. I know how busy Aaron and Dario (and others in the team) are so perhaps this requires a new position to coordinate between researchers and Foundation resources?
Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are any plans for RCOM that have been made by the research team and the only people who can answer that are folks in the research team :)
Best, Heather.
Heather Ford Oxford Internet Institute http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk Doctoral Programme EthnographyMatters http://ethnographymatters.net | Oxford Digital Ethnography Group http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=115 http://hblog.org http://hblog.org/ | @hfordsa http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa
On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I meant the community/communities of WMF. But the authority of the community derives from WMF, which chooses to delegate such matters. I think that “advise” is a good word to use. Kerry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:*Amir E. Aharoni [mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il <mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>] *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM *To:* kerry.raymond@gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>; Research into Wikimedia content and communities *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys >WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. I don't think that it really should be about WMF. The WMF shouldn't enforce anything. The community can formulate good practices for researchers and _advise_ community members not to cooperate with researchers who don't follow these practices. Not much more is needed. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2014-07-17 8:24 GMT+03:00 Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>>: Just saying here what I already put on the Talk page: I am a little bothered by the opening sentence "This page documents the process that researchers must follow before asking Wikipedia contributors to participate in research studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments." WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. What WMF does own is its communication channels to me as a contributor and WMF has a right to control what occurs on those channels. Also I think WMF probably should be concerned about both its readers and its contributors being recruited through its channels (as either might be being recruited). I think this distinction should be made, e.g. "This page documents the process that researchers must follow if they wish to use Wikipedia's (WMF's?) communication channels to recruit people to participate in research studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments. Communication channels include its mailing lists, its Project pages, Talk pages, and User Talk pages [and whatever else I've forgotten]." If researchers want to recruit WPians via non-WMF means, I don’t think it’s any business of WMF’s. An example might be a researcher who wanted to contact WPians via chapters or thorgs; I would leave it for the chapter/thorg to decide if they wanted to assist the researcher via their communication channels. Of course, the practical reality of it is that some researchers (oblivious of WMF’s concerns in relation to recruitment of WPians to research projects) will simply use WMF’s channels without asking nicely first. Obviously we can remove such requests on-wiki and follow up any email requests with the commentary that this was not an approved request. In my category of [whatever else I’ve forgotten], I guess there are things like Facebook groups and any other social media presence. Also to be practical, if WMF is to have a process to vet research surveys, I think it has to be sufficiently fast and not be overly demanding to avoid the possibility of the researcher giving up (“too hard to deal with these people”) and simply spamming email, project pages, social media in the hope of recruiting some participants regardless. That is, if we make it too slow/hard to do the right thing, we effectively encourage doing the wrong thing. Also, what value-add can we give them to reward those who do the right thing? It’s nice to have a carrot as well as a stick when it comes to onerous processes J Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we perhaps do things to try to make the researcher feel part of the community to make “giving back” more likely? For example, could we give them a slot every now and again to talk about their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage them to be on this mailing list. Are we at a point where it might make sense to organise a Wikipedia research conference to help build a research community? Just thinking aloud here … Kerry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:*wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>] *On Behalf Of *Aaron Halfaker *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 6:59 AM *To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia surveys RCOM review is still alive and looking for new reviewers (really, coordinators). Researchers can be directed to me or Dario (dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org <mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>) to be assigned a reviewer. There is also a proposed policy on enwiki that could use some eyeballs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com <mailto:nemowiki@gmail.com>> wrote: phoebe ayers, 16/07/2014 19:21: > (Personally, I think the answer should be to resuscitate RCOM, but > that's easy to say and harder to do!) IMHO in the meanwhile the most useful thing folks can do is subscribing to the feed of new research pages: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=atom&hidebots=1&hideredirs=1&limit=500&offset=&namespace=202> It's easier to build a functioning RCOM out of an active community of "reviewers", than the other way round. 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