Hi Dario,
This proposal went through a long review process, involving community
forums, the Research Committee and various WMF
departments since early 2010.
The Berkman research team first approached WMF to discuss this study in
January 2010. They suggested a protocol to recruit English Wikipedia
contributors to participate in an early version of this study by March 2010
and posted a proposal to the Administrators’ noticeboard to get community
feedback [6]. The community response at that time opposed the proposed
recruitment protocol (posting individual invitation messages on user talk
pages). It was suggested instead that the recruitment should be handled
through a CentralNotice banner to be displayed to registered editors, but
concerns were raised on how to minimize the disruption.
This is not a good summary of the conclusions there at all; and it is
worrying that it has been read that way...
You seem to have taken that discussion as implicit approval to run a
CentralNotice banner - although that was certainly suggested as an option
at the time I think it was reasonably expected for further community input
later down the road. Certainly when I supported the suggestion of some sort
of targeted site notice I envisioned a text link, or something.
Throughout the review process of this recruitment
protocol, the research
team received constant feedback from the Foundation’s legal team, the
community department, the tech department and the communication team before
the campaign went live.
But not the community?
The campaign was announced in the CentralNotice
calendar one month before
its launch [11] and the launch was with a post on the Foundation’s blog.
The banner was enabled on December 8 at 11:00pm UTC. 800+ participants
completed the study within a few hours since its launch. The banner was
then taken down by a meta-admin a few hours after the launch due to the
concerns described above.
Again; not announced to the community. There was a clear an present
communication failure here.
We realize that despite an extensive review, the
launch of this project
was not fully advertised on community forums. We plan to shortly resume the
campaign (for the time needed by the researchers to complete their
responses) after a full redesign of the recruitment protocol in order to
address the concerns raised by many of you over the last 24 hours. Here’s
what we are doing:
• Provide you with better information about the project
We asked the research team to promptly set up a FAQ section on the project
page on Meta [13], and to be available to address any concern about the
study on the discussion page of this project. The project page on Meta will
be linked from the recruitment banner itself.
• Redesign the banner
We understand that the banner design has been interpreted by some as
ad-like (even if the goal was to make clear that this study was not being
run by WMF, as it implied a redirection to a third party website for
performing the experiment). In coordination with the research team, we will
come up with a banner design that will be more in line with the concerns
expressed by the community (for instance by removing the logos from the
banner).
• Make privacy terms as transparent as possible
Upon clicking on the banner, participants accept to share their username,
edit count and user privileges with the research team. The previous version
didn’t make it explicit and we are working to address this problem. To make
the process totally transparent we will make the acceptance of these terms
explicit in the banner itself.
Once redirected to the landing page, participants will have to accept the
terms of participation in order to enter the study. The project is funded
by the European Research Council: the data collected in this study is
subject to strict European privacy protocols. The research team will use
this data for research purposes only. The research team is not exposed to
and does not record participants’ IP addresses.
You need to tell this *to the community*. Otherwise the discussion will
simply strike up again once you re-enable it. I notice you posted this
exact same message to wikipedia-en-l. The lack of recent discussion on that
list should tell you how effective that is as a communication tool.
The vast majority of English Wikipedia discussion occurs on-wiki, and the
vast majority of editors prefer discussions to occur on-wiki. If you want
to interact with the community, and in this case I think you have to, then
you really have to do so on-wiki :)
We would like to hear from you on the redesign of the banner to make sure
it meets the expectations of the community and doesn’t
lend itself to any
kind of confusion. We will post the new banners to Meta and try to address
all pending questions before we resume the campaign.
Most en.wiki editors don't hang out on Meta - and I think it is reasonable
not to expect them to. Especially as this is purely a project focused on
English Wikipedia; it needs to be discussed on English Wikipedia. If you
need help with the right places/protocol then I would be happy to oblige.
This once again highlights the huge disconnect between Wikipedians, the
foundations and the various higher level commitees. It's the same every
time - something big appears, the community get cross/upset/confused, the
foundation etc. express incredulity... and no one talks.
My final comment is this; I am fairly active around here. I am on
foundation-l, I read meta for important notices, and I am active on
en.wiki. And the first time I knew about this (since the Admin Noticeboard
discussion some months back) was when the banner appeared. So how anyone
else stood a chance of giving input I do not know :) Whilst much of the
discussion was public, it was "hidden". And the key failing here is in not
making it open and accessible.
Tom