Good afternoon everyone,
Just a reminder that the consultation on membership strategy has been open for ten days - and so far elicited some useful feedback (so thank you to those who have commented) Its looks at how members are different to volunteers, whether we think they should have a more direct role in the governance of the organisation (perhaps by developing chapter policy) and what we think a membership strategy should aim at (a wide membership base paying a nominal joining fee, or a smaller group of more invested people?)
Please have a look and if you've got the time, join in the discussion http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Membership_strategy_consultationwith the benefit of your experiences. The consultation will remain open until the 2nd of November.* *
More pressing - the draft members' survey questions https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMUK_membership_survey_-_suggestions_and_comments#Draft_survey_textare now up! These asks some tricky and varied questions - from trying to see if members think staff are responsive to queries to whether a change in voting system would make them more or less likely to vote in elections.
I would like to send the survey out to members soon to give them time for people to respond and then for me to incorporate response results in a report to Trustees that must be finalised by the 7th November. Therefore I'd be grateful if all comments could be made by *no later than 9am this Friday morning (26th October) *which will allow me time to make any final tweaks prior to sending out the survey via email.
Thanks all - hope you're having a good week!
Hello again all -
Well, the members survey is now well underway - thank you to all who responded and if you've not had time, do try and complete it soon (it will have to close by the end of the week!) If you are a member you should have had a link via email - if not, check your spam folder and if still no email, email membership@wikimedia.org.uk and we'll figure out the problem!
Meanwhile, the report to the Board of Trustees needs to be finalised by Friday - so any final thoughts on the Membership strategy - please share them herehttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Membership_strategy_consultation in order to have them included in the report!
Many thanks,
Katherine
On 22 October 2012 15:54, Katherine Bavage < katherine.bavage@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
Good afternoon everyone,
Just a reminder that the consultation on membership strategy has been open for ten days - and so far elicited some useful feedback (so thank you to those who have commented) Its looks at how members are different to volunteers, whether we think they should have a more direct role in the governance of the organisation (perhaps by developing chapter policy) and what we think a membership strategy should aim at (a wide membership base paying a nominal joining fee, or a smaller group of more invested people?)
Please have a look and if you've got the time, join in the discussion http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Membership_strategy_consultationwith the benefit of your experiences. The consultation will remain open until the 2nd of November.* *
More pressing - the draft members' survey questions https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMUK_membership_survey_-_suggestions_and_comments#Draft_survey_textare now up! These asks some tricky and varied questions - from trying to see if members think staff are responsive to queries to whether a change in voting system would make them more or less likely to vote in elections.
I would like to send the survey out to members soon to give them time for people to respond and then for me to incorporate response results in a report to Trustees that must be finalised by the 7th November. Therefore I'd be grateful if all comments could be made by *no later than 9am this Friday morning (26th October) *which will allow me time to make any final tweaks prior to sending out the survey via email.
Thanks all - hope you're having a good week!
-- *Katherine Bavage * *Fundraising Manager * *Wikimedia UK* +44 20 7065 0949
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
On 11 October 2012 11:20, Katherine Bavage < katherine.bavage@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
Good morning everyone!
If you have time do look at pages on the UK Wiki about the direction Wikimedia UK's membership can take in future.
Here is the pagehttps://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMUK_membership_survey_-_suggestions_and_commentsdiscussing the kinds of things you think a survey to members should cover - I'd like to get the survey developed soon so contributions made now would be very timely, and I can put up a draft of the survey questions when I've written for further comment.
Here is the page https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangeswith some initial thoughts on building a membership strategy - all comments welcome, including links to previous meeting minutes or otherwise that you think should be considered.
Many thanks,
-- *Katherine Bavage * *Fundraising Manager * *Wikimedia UK* +44 20 7065 0949
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
I'm very lazy and managed to not fill in the survey or give feedback.
But I just had to note that the questions "How do you identify your gender?" and "How do you identify your sexual orientation?" are most amusing to me.
The answers "it's on my birth certificate", "after a lot of soul searching and teenage anxiety" and "well, duh, have you seen my browsing history?" do not seem to be on there. Nor indeed is "with a recent gas bill and a passport". ;-)
(Seriously though: what you identify as is different from how you identify it.)
It might also be useful next time to include a question about how exactly members participate. I'd love to know whether, say, the rough breakdown of the membership who edit different projects. It might be useful so we can support projects that aren't either English Wikipedia or Commons.
How about 'Trial and error'...
I think these are all sage suggestions for a future survey...
Seriously though - the phrasing came following reading a blog I read that talks about why this type of question is better for people who identify as trans ( http://tranifesto.com/2009/07/06/multiple-choice-is-rarely-trans-friendly/) - I went with a mixed approach of providing options but a more openly phrased question. I'm open to use redrafting the questions, but only if the redrafted versions were accommodating in this respect.
Always happy to take suggests in advance (I think your timing here of the day I post up the report on results from said survey particularly cruel :p) As for the editing question - I was very keen that the focus be on members and membership role, not 'members as editors' etc However, it seems like a good question to include in the standard precursor section on demographics next time.
I could go into it more, but it's Friday afternoon. Suffice to say I will ping you next time in advance so you can have input into the questions early next time :D
Have a good weekend (and see some of you at the meet up on Sunday hopefully!)
Katherine
On 9 November 2012 16:40, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
I'm very lazy and managed to not fill in the survey or give feedback.
But I just had to note that the questions "How do you identify your gender?" and "How do you identify your sexual orientation?" are most amusing to me.
The answers "it's on my birth certificate", "after a lot of soul searching and teenage anxiety" and "well, duh, have you seen my browsing history?" do not seem to be on there. Nor indeed is "with a recent gas bill and a passport". ;-)
(Seriously though: what you identify as is different from how you identify it.)
It might also be useful next time to include a question about how exactly members participate. I'd love to know whether, say, the rough breakdown of the membership who edit different projects. It might be useful so we can support projects that aren't either English Wikipedia or Commons.
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 9 November 2012 17:22, Katherine Bavage katherine.bavage@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
Seriously though - the phrasing came following reading a blog I read that talks about why this type of question is better for people who identify as trans (http://tranifesto.com/2009/07/06/multiple-choice-is-rarely-trans-friendly/)
- I went with a mixed approach of providing options but a more openly
phrased question. I'm open to use redrafting the questions, but only if the redrafted versions were accommodating in this respect.
What you're really doing there, though, is asking "How do you answer the question "What is your gender?"?" which is logically equivalent to just asking "What is your gender?".
Including enough options that everyone will fall into one of the boxes (or at least "Other") is a good idea, but torturing the English language in an attempt to appear politically correct doesn't actually achieve anything!
On 9 November 2012 17:38, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Including enough options that everyone will fall into one of the boxes (or at least "Other") is a good idea, but torturing the English language in an attempt to appear politically correct doesn't actually achieve anything!
The link given suggests that assertion is incorrect.
- d.
On 09/11/2012 17:38, Thomas Dalton wrote:
What you're really doing there, though, is asking "How do you answer the question "What is your gender?"?" which is logically equivalent to just asking "What is your gender?".
Including enough options that everyone will fall into one of the boxes (or at least "Other") is a good idea, but torturing the English language in an attempt to appear politically correct doesn't actually achieve anything!
With respect, it's simply not a case of merely appearing as politically correct.
KTC
On Friday, 9 November 2012 at 19:22, Katie Chan wrote:
On 09/11/2012 17:38, Thomas Dalton wrote:
What you're really doing there, though, is asking "How do you answer the question "What is your gender?"?" which is logically equivalent to just asking "What is your gender?".
Including enough options that everyone will fall into one of the boxes (or at least "Other") is a good idea, but torturing the English language in an attempt to appear politically correct doesn't actually achieve anything!
With respect, it's simply not a case of merely appearing as politically correct.
Yep, I've been reading ONS reports (aren't my Friday evenings fun?). Good survey questions can be written that are understandable and aren't "politically correct". All we have to do is steal what is already being done by people who have thought about it properly.
On 9 November 2012 20:05, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
Yep, I've been reading ONS reports (aren't my Friday evenings fun?). Good survey questions can be written that are understandable and aren't "politically correct". All we have to do is steal what is already being done by people who have thought about it properly.
Yes.
In any case, a good general rule is: if someone says "politically correct", in the overwhelming majority of cases they're looking for an excuse to act like a massive dick. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's the way to bet.
- d.
On 09/11/12 19:22, Katie Chan wrote:
With respect, it's simply not a case of merely appearing as politically correct.
Indeed. Somebody should have carried out an Equality Impact Assessment on the survey and the methods used.
I also question the fact that the first survey was tied to a member's identity and a member had to request an anonymous survey. Why not make the survey anonymous (with an identity token given to all members to ensure that only members replied) with an option to sign the survey?
Gordo
Afternoon all,
I'd always prefer to torture English than exclude anyone, but point taken!
Tom (Morris) - as I said when we spoke yesterday - I'll get involved in the Meta discussions as I think they're a really valuable conversation to have across Chapters. I totally agree on matching the questions to ONS data questions were possible to improve direct comparison - having only realised this would have been a better approach after the survey closed when wanting to contextualise results in national averages :(
As for the anonymity of the survey or not - I did answer these questions already on wiki ( http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMUK_membership_survey_-_suggestions_and_commen... ).
As I said there, I'm happy to make lots of improvements, and certainly revisit the question of anonymous/non anonymous surveys. On the one hand, anonymity protects people when answering questions with sensitive personal data such as income or sexuality, and may ensure the results are more genuine. On the other, it can give people licence to give unconstructive or malicious responses which can skew results in small data sets. What we want is the maximum number of responses that genuinely reflect what people feel, without opening the survey up to potential abuse.
There isn't a perfect solution with Survey Monkey, our survey service. An anonymous survey with a password protected link can still be accessed by non recipients if someone emailed them the link and password - generally not a likely scenario but possibly of concern.
If we use Survey monkey to administer anonymously emailing recipients with unique links that cannot be used if the email is forwarded, we lose the details of the mailing from Civi CRM (although we can create a dummy activity log against people's records), it goes in a plain text email, rather than our own HTML template, which could decrease responses, and we can't follow up any questions that indicate people want to know more about a specific service or opportunity (such as wanting to do more editing).
Conclusion: I shall think'pon this some more, ask around amongst colleagues in my field what they do and why for more insight, and of course, will start on-wiki discussions in good time prior to the next survey so we can all discuss pros and cons and help edit better questions.
On balance, I'm inclined to think that we should aim for the next survey to be anonymous, if we can get gatekeeping against potential misuse right, and have an option for people to provide an email address if they're happy for their results to be followed up or shared. I'm particularly keen on the latter, as it would allow us to ask their permission to quote individual comments in publications, and allow us to email people with relevant follow up info.
Thanks again for the thoughts!
Katherine
On 10 November 2012 08:39, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
On 09/11/12 19:22, Katie Chan wrote:
With respect, it's simply not a case of merely appearing as politically correct.
Indeed. Somebody should have carried out an Equality Impact Assessment on the survey and the methods used.
I also question the fact that the first survey was tied to a member's identity and a member had to request an anonymous survey. Why not make the survey anonymous (with an identity token given to all members to ensure that only members replied) with an option to sign the survey?
Gordo
______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-lhttp://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 12/11/12 13:21, Katherine Bavage wrote:
. On the one hand, anonymity protects people when answering questions with sensitive personal data such as income or sexuality, and may ensure the results are more genuine.
Surely, like job applications, these can processed separately, or made anonymous before Wikimedia UK sees them?
Equal opportunities monitoring (of protected characteristics) should always be distinct from all other data, for the reasons you state. In a job application, this stops prejudice (positive or negative).
Gordo
On 12/11/2012 13:31, Gordon Joly wrote:
On 12/11/12 13:21, Katherine Bavage wrote:
. On the one hand, anonymity protects people when answering questions with sensitive personal data such as income or sexuality, and may ensure the results are more genuine.
Surely, like job applications, these can processed separately, or made anonymous before Wikimedia UK sees them?
Who's going to do the anonymousing? When it happens in a job application (for a large enough company), the company (HR) still see the data, it's just that the persons making the hiring decision doesn't.
KTC
On 12/11/12 13:35, Katie Chan wrote:
Who's going to do the anonymousing? When it happens in a job application (for a large enough company), the company (HR) still see the data, it's just that the persons making the hiring decision doesn't.
Indeed.
Who would do it? Maybe Wikimedia UK could use software. Or a third party.
In health research, most data is made anonymous by research assistants, who are real people. Sometimes, they might also process the data a second time. Taking a set of identity keys into the data and then make that set of keys anonymous a second time. At this point, all traces of the actual identity are very well hidden, and data can then be sent to other agents in studies (e.g. external GPs) for processing.
Gordo
Don't worry about it. It was more an opportunity to make a joke about gay gas bills.
Given that I found some other problems with the Wikipedia Editors Survey that the Foundation has been conducted, I've decided to pull together the best bits of various demographic survey guidance (from governments etc.) on Meta. That way the Foundation and Chapters and so on can just steal those rather than make up their own.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Survey_best_practices
One question about was staff (or Trustees), and are they accessible / accountable?
This is two questions. People can be very accessible. And accountable or not!
Gordo
On 09/11/2012 16:40, Tom Morris wrote:
I'm very lazy and managed to not fill in the survey or give feedback.
But I just had to note that the questions "How do you identify your gender?" and "How do you identify your sexual orientation?" are most amusing to me.
The answers "it's on my birth certificate", "after a lot of soul searching and teenage anxiety" and "well, duh, have you seen my browsing history?" do not seem to be on there. Nor indeed is "with a recent gas bill and a passport". ;-)
(Seriously though: what you identify as is different from how you identify it.)
Personally, I would word it as "Do you identify as...?" or "What do you identified as your gender?".
KTC
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