on 9/29/07 8:58 AM, Casey Brown at cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com wrote: I agree with you, Casey. An in-depth survey of a Project would not only give us a sense of its demographics, but of its general health; and a sense of what's needed to better meet its needs and how to improve it. I would be very interested in being a part of a team constructing, conducting and analyzing such a survey. How do you get something like this going? Marc

OK... Forget the question :-) I just realised there were another 30 emails above the one I responded to ;-) Best Debbie

The reason behind this, i suspect, is that most people complaining are not seen as 'in the project'. There was a large discussion sometime ago about how at some point, early 2005 or so, the influx of new users got so great that we stopped being able to enculturate them to the mindset and goals of the project. There are simply quite a few people here who just never got it as a result of that. You can see it in the responses to certain situations on wiki and on the mailing list. It would be nice to begin to show new users the point and culture of the wiki again, but numbers just don, allow it, and the longer users are doing a fine job of shepherding the community as a whole in the correct direction that holds true to our original goals. On 10/2/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- -Brock

I rather expressly said they weren't my thoughts per se. They were the results of a rather long discussion among a couple dozen people, mostly old timers, on the irc channel this summer. On 10/2/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- -Brock

on 10/2/07 6:39 PM, Brock Weller at brock.weller(a)gmail.com wrote: This attitude on some peoples' part would also be something interesting to investigate. Marc

Marc, We've had some issues on Wikinews recently where people have been overly blunt and offputting. On one side it is "I am defending the project", on the other it is "I am doing my best to contribute". As a far smaller project than Wikipedia may I suggest you have a better chance of putting more of our contributors on the shrink's couch? If you can get help setting up a survey I'd be happy to participate and help promote it to other Wikinewsies. Being a smaller project I think you'd get a feel for how to handle the data before moving onto something as big as Wikipedia and trying to select a representative sample there. Brian. -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Marc Riddell Sent: 02 October 2007 15:28 To: debbie(a)ictmarketing.co.uk, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Surveys on 10/1/07 4:34 PM, Debbie Garside at debbie(a)ictmarketing.co.uk wrote: emails Thank you for responding, Debbie. What I am interested in, generally, is the state of online collaboration and community building; and I am particularly wanting to study interpersonal dynamics, conflict resolution and identity within the Foundation's projects. In other words, I would like to take a Project's emotional temperature. In the English Wikipedia, for example, there are those on the Mailing List who say, we're fine, the culture's fine - don't mess with it. However, there are also enough posts from persons who say they are feeling abused, ignored, and not being treated fairly in the Project. And, when these persons do post, they are usually portrayed as whiners, malcontents, and as persons who "need to get with the program". In short, people simply don't seem to know how to talk with each other without being extremely defensive, or grossly offensive. This severely inhibits and degrades the quality of collaboration. I have some ideas on how to improve some of this, but first I would like to conduct an honest, objective survey to see if this is simply my imagination, or is actually a true picture of the state of things. My field is Clinical Psychology. I could assist in analyzing such a survey, but I am not schooled or experienced in actually creating one. My thoughts are to present the findings to the Foundation itself. There is plenty of time to work within here. I would like to do this right. I welcome your input. Marc Riddell _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Marc Riddell wrote: Mark, I would just like to add my strong support of this notion. I am very interested in seeing a survey done of both of the contributors and the readers. I don't think we have the internal capacity at the office to start really thinking about this until (I am guessing) the spring. But setting aside capacity issues, I completely agree that your premise is worth exploring. If you manage to make any progress, I would be very pleased to see the results. And if I make progress first, I will get you involved :-)

Please be sure to keep us, or just wiki-research-l maybe, notified too. :-) On 10/2/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

Hi Mark I think it is an excellent idea and will give people an opportunity to have their say and also, perhaps, to understand misconceptions from newbies (like me). If you can put a draft together of the sort of questions you think you would like to ask I would happily work with you form that point onwards. As to actually getting an online survey going with links from Wiki sites, it is relatively easy as we can use something like Survey Monkey www.surveymonkey.com. It is dead simple to use and produces base table analysis and some more in-depth cross-tabulations too (I think). The cost of Survey Monkey is dependant on the number of surveys completed and whether subscription is monthly (approx £10 I think) or annually (£100 ish). So quite within a Wikimedia budget I would think. Best regards Debbie

On 29/09/2007, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: Run a search through the list archives. An example would be http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-June/075908.html -- geni

on 9/30/07 6:33 PM, Brock Weller at brock.weller(a)gmail.com wrote: Sounds good, Brock :-). Any idea who the author of the thesis was, or how to find a copy of the results of the study? Marc

On 9/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: I take that back, doing an email search I found this: Benjamin Keith Johnson wrote: all be your Must be 18+ University, -- -Brock