phoebe ayers wrote:
* The researcher has done the standard things (posted
on the mailing
list, on the village pump) and hasn't gotten any results; or has
semi-randomly posted on people's talk pages, potentially getting a
warning about spamming in the process
As a result:
* many of the same people (i.e. very visible contributors) keep
getting asked to participate in different studies; or
* the researcher is left with a self-selected group of people from the
mailing lists or other places, which may in no way represent 'the
community' (my hypothesis is that we have many small communities,
working under the greater umbrella of Wikipedia); and who may be
people who are particularly outspoken or disgruntled; or
There is an interesting tool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random/User
If anybody wants a truly random sample of Wikipedia users, that's a good
way to do it.
Is asking for a survey spamming? That's a good question. If we could
raise it on a community page and get a consensus that it is not, than we
could potentially create a bot that could be fed a survey and would
deliver it to x random users via the above page.
--
Piotr Konieczny
"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in
theory."