In order to address issues with previous volunteer community surveys which may not have included options able to maximize volunteer attraction and retention, I have drafted a revised volunteer community survey which includes new items and top-scoring components of the previous community survey:
http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft
It is in English only at present. Translations and other internationalization of the responses are most welcome, because at least a few are overly US-specific at present. The draft version will accept responses from anyone for two weeks. The Foundation can select a random sample of long-term volunteers from email registrations. Alternatively, recent changes can be used in conjunction with editor histories for random samples which volunteers could use to confirm official results as a matter of best practices, or if the Foundation fails to act.
A detailed rationale for this revision is at: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2014-March/000420.htm...
Best regards, James Salsman
I took a look at the survey and it is seriously unclear. Is there supposed to be an explanation which explains what it all means before filling in? Cheers, Peter ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Salsman" jsalsman@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:50 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] draft revised volunteer community survey
In order to address issues with previous volunteer community surveys which may not have included options able to maximize volunteer attraction and retention, I have drafted a revised volunteer community survey which includes new items and top-scoring components of the previous community survey:
http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft
It is in English only at present. Translations and other internationalization of the responses are most welcome, because at least a few are overly US-specific at present. The draft version will accept responses from anyone for two weeks. The Foundation can select a random sample of long-term volunteers from email registrations. Alternatively, recent changes can be used in conjunction with editor histories for random samples which volunteers could use to confirm official results as a matter of best practices, or if the Foundation fails to act.
A detailed rationale for this revision is at: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2014-March/000420.htm...
Best regards, James Salsman
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Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all means?
It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey
"A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the highest priority by our community."
If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background material at http://demochoice.org/
The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 "strongly agree" to 5 "strongly disagree") responses when respondents are not familiar with all the options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than ranking.
Best regards, James
On 13 March 2014 05:13, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all means?
It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey
"A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the highest priority by our community."
If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background material at http://demochoice.org/
The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 "strongly agree" to 5 "strongly disagree") responses when respondents are not familiar with all the options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than ranking.
Best regards, James
I don't think this would be a very useful survey, and I would not participate in it. The shopping list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core philosophies, or its purpose - is very americo-centric. Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be "elected". Elected for what? Why 12 of them? What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, but for different reasons?
Mostly, though....this just really feels like it is trying to take the Wikimedia community down a path that has nothing to do with our core objectives, and to turn us into just another advocacy group. I'm not interested in that.
Risker/Anne
In addition to Risker's comments, which I agree with 100%, I would further request that any future survey of users be designed and supervised only by someone with extensive expertise and experience in the field of survey methodology. Many previous surveys that have been done by the Foundation have, despite a lot of hard work and effort put into them, suffered from methodological flaws, either in the form of the questions asked or the way that the user sample was selected. The results have therefore not only been useless in some cases, but in some cases actually misleading and thus potentially damaging to the movement.
This is something that the Foundation has gotten better at over the years, and since we're on the topic it's something I'd like them to stick to!
Cheers, Craig
On 13 March 2014 21:32, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 March 2014 05:13, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all means?
It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey
"A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the highest priority by our community."
If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background material at http://demochoice.org/
The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 "strongly agree" to 5 "strongly disagree") responses when respondents are not familiar with all the options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than ranking.
Best regards, James
I don't think this would be a very useful survey, and I would not participate in it. The shopping list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core philosophies, or its purpose - is very americo-centric. Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be "elected". Elected for what? Why 12 of them? What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, but for different reasons?
Mostly, though....this just really feels like it is trying to take the Wikimedia community down a path that has nothing to do with our core objectives, and to turn us into just another advocacy group. I'm not interested in that.
Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Craig,
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 4:42 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
In addition to Risker's comments, which I agree with 100%, I would further request that any future survey of users be designed and supervised only by someone with extensive expertise and experience in the field of survey methodology. Many previous surveys that have been done by the Foundation have, despite a lot of hard work and effort put into them, suffered from methodological flaws, either in the form of the questions asked or the way that the user sample was selected. The results have therefore not only been useless in some cases, but in some cases actually misleading and thus potentially damaging to the movement.
Agree about the importance of careful survey design. But, without revisiting the dispute about the question in previous editor surveys that asked Wikimedians to rate the performance of Wikimedia chapters, which I know well you had concerns about, let me point out that the Foundation's 2011 reader survey and the two 2011 editor surveys (whose questionnaires and methodology were largely reused in the 2012 editor survey) were designed and supervised by a PhD with extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research, who had been conducting surveys in several countries even before she joined WMF. Of course that doesn't mean that the questionnaire and methodology can't be criticized or improved in each case - I recall that community feedback about specific issues led to various improvements - , just wanted to set the record straight.
This is something that the Foundation has gotten better at over the years, and since we're on the topic it's something I'd like them to stick to!
Thanks, and please do continue to hold WMF to high standards ;)
Cheers, Craig
On 13 March 2014 21:32, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 March 2014 05:13, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Is there ... an explanation which explains what it all means?
It's an attempted improvement on the policy survey at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Survey
"A survey about the importance of various policy issues ... given the highest priority by our community."
If you are having trouble working the preference ballot at http://demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=wmfcsdraft then please try the demonstration, instructions, and background material at http://demochoice.org/
The ranked-preference ballot makes respondents consider choices pairwise, which has an accuracy advantage over approval (yes or no to each) or Likert scale (e.g. 1 "strongly agree" to 5 "strongly disagree") responses when respondents are not familiar with all the options. Approval on an issues survey can have problems with relatively disproportionate numbers of responses with only a few options or all or almost all options selected, and the Likert scale gets fewer responses on issues less familiar to respondents than ranking.
Best regards, James
I don't think this would be a very useful survey, and I would not participate in it. The shopping list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core philosophies, or its purpose - is very americo-centric. Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be "elected". Elected for what? Why 12 of them? What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, but for different reasons?
Mostly, though....this just really feels like it is trying to take the Wikimedia community down a path that has nothing to do with our core objectives, and to turn us into just another advocacy group. I'm not interested in that.
Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On 13 March 2014 11:32, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Mostly, though....this just really feels like it is trying to take the Wikimedia community down a path that has nothing to do with our core objectives, and to turn us into just another advocacy group. I'm not interested in that.
+1
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a good and important thing, and I would certainly agree that the two nations which have somehow neglected to ratify it should certainly be strongly encouraged to do so...
...but I would strongly oppose WMF being the vehicle for such domestic political campaigning. It's simply not what it's for. Likewise the appearance of tax policy or education funding.
On much the same basis, I would be uncomfortable with Greenpeace being persuaded to act as a spokesman for net neutrality, or for UNICEF to suddenly start aggressively campaigning against whaling. All good topics, but they should have other priorities.
The underlying argument here seems to be "these things are important and indirectly affect the work we do or might do". However, were we to follow this to its logical end, we should campaign to shut down about half the world's charities and redirect all their funds to researching asteroid deflection...
... list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core philosophies, or its purpose....
If the Trustees have decided that we should pay advocates, why not advocate on the issues most likely to increase the number, persistence, and availability of our volunteers? What proportion of past Wikimedia volunteer surveys asked about any issues which would tend to attract new editors, retain existing editors, or increase the time availability of potential editors? I know of three, and only one was produced by Foundation staff. Just because Foundation staff avoid advocacy questions out of an abundance of caution concerning their nonprofit organization restrictions, there is no reason to censor the assessment of volunteer opinion on those topics. On the contrary, the restrictions cause a clear systemic bias in the formal statistical sense, and I would be professionally negligent if I did not recommend countering that bias. If there are actual reasons to believe that the additions I have chosen "have little or no correlation" with such factors then I would like to read them, because they can be expected to improve the ability to attract, retain, and ease the contributions of volunteers for concrete reasons in the most reliable sources.
very americo-centric
If there is some reason to say more than 4 out of 32 of the items are US-specific, I would be surprised. Some of the items can easily be internationalized further, and I will endeavor to do so. For better or worse, the Foundation is in the US, and Foundation employees have to live with, e.g., the US healthcare system, US tax incidence, US working hours, US public education, US infrastructure, US national security eavesdropping, etc. Therefore all of those issues affect all of our volunteers.
Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be "elected". Elected for what? Why 12 of them?
The cut-off is arbitrary and was intended to be roughly proportional to the number of issues listed in the abstract of the most recent EU survey.
What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, but for different reasons?
Advocacy staff should have access to volunteer opinion data in ways which would allow them to tailor advocacy opportunities to those which are considered most important by the largest number of volunteers, and also in ways where the subset of volunteers who consider less popular issues important can still help to act on them when the evidence suggests the outcomes would justify the effort.
Best regards, James
On 13 March 2014 22:38, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
If the Trustees have decided that we should pay advocates,
<snip>
Link to the board of decision to pay advocates please.
Risker
Link to the board of decision to pay advocates please.
The most recent seems to be the approval f the Annual Plan as per http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2013-2014_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answ...
On 13 March 2014 23:56, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Link to the board of decision to pay advocates please.
The most recent seems to be the approval f the Annual Plan as per
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2013-2014_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answ...
It's the name of a department.... "Legal and Community Advocacy" or LCA for short. That's not really the same thing.
Risker/Anne
Ah. Yeah. The job of the "Community Advocacy" bit of "Legal and Community Advocacy" is, as I understand it, to advocate for the community's need within the Foundation, and act as a conduit to the community for legal stuff. Their job is not to advocate for "reduction in public school class sizes" or "more steeply progressive taxation". Indeed, these things are not the job of anyone at the Foundation, and never should be. I'm kind of bemused as to why these are even being brought up.
On 13 March 2014 21:04, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 March 2014 23:56, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Link to the board of decision to pay advocates please.
The most recent seems to be the approval f the Annual Plan as per
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2013-2014_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answ...
It's the name of a department.... "Legal and Community Advocacy" or LCA for short. That's not really the same thing.
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On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 9:31 PM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
Ah. Yeah. The job of the "Community Advocacy" bit of "Legal and Community Advocacy" is, as I understand it, to advocate for the community's need within the Foundation, and act as a conduit to the community for legal stuff. Their job is not to advocate for "reduction in public school class sizes" or "more steeply progressive taxation". Indeed, these things are not the job of anyone at the Foundation, and never should be. I'm kind of bemused as to why these are even being brought up.
That. :)
pb
*Philippe Beaudette * \ Director, Community Advocacy \ Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 | philippe@wikimedia.org | : @Philippewikihttps://twitter.com/Philippewiki
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