---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: [RCom-l] Fwd: Actual Inactive Wikipedia administrator
survey (swalling at
wikimedia.org)
To: rcom-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
On 12 February 2012, Steven Walling wrote:
I did not receive any prior contact from Salsman about
this before
he began to send emails out.
That is blatantly untrue. See this IRC Office Hours log from
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2012-02-10
[09:41am] jsalsman okay, well I guess the first thing I need is to
know who in Zack's department will be point of contact for editor
recruitment efforts
[09:41am] Philippe jsalsman: that hasn't changed.
[09:41am] jsalsman who then?
[09:41am] StevenW jsalsman: you can talk to me and Maryana
[09:41am] jsalsman okay
...
[09:59am] jsalsman StevenW: I'm going to go ahead with the three-year
old inactive admins survey and send you access to the results
spreadsheet
On 13 February 2012, Philippe Beaudette wrote at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Heads…
I was unaware of distribution mechanism and was
certainly unaware that it would
list a Foundation staff member as the contact.
That is also blatantly untrue, as is clear from the plain language of
the IRC log above, as well as
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Co…
On 14 February 2012, Dario Taraborelli wrote at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Inactive_administrators_survey#Lack_of_…
This survey has not been reviewed by the Research
Committee and
as such it's in violation of our Research:Subject recruitment.
The page linked to there says, "Until an official policy is approved
by the Wikimedia Research Committee regarding subject recruitment,
individual requests can be submitted following these instructions."
The only Wikipedia Research Policy was announced at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2010-April/000955.html
and all of the provisions for subject recruitment approvals were
removed from that policy as described in
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2012-February/001839.h…
Moreover, Steven Walling has stated twice so far that I continued
sending email surveys after he asked me to stop. That is easily
disproven. I stopped sending them four hours before he asked me to
stop.
As for the survey, it's been an enormous success, with several
formerly inactive admins returning to editing so far, and profoundly
helpful data for resolving issues surrounding admin and editor
attrition.
It is abundantly clear from
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:Task_force/Community_Health/…
that this survey had been approved in September 2010 but never acted
on. I brought this up repeatedly in the years since and was ignored.
It took me three days to administer the survey.
The intentional lies about my conduct are *not* ethical, and I am owed
an apology.
Sincerely,
James Salsman