[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Brand Survey Analysis

[Robert Horning]

Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> On 7/1/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I wouldn't say that. It was a personal survey Erik carried out and he
>> is merely reporting what he discovers as it stands - it is still open
>> and ongoing, as he says.
>>
>> On 01/07/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> 12 people is not "strong support". If 12 people is a large majority of
>>> those that responded, then your survey was a completely failure and
>>> you can't draw any conclusions from it. You're going to have to try
>>> again and do something to get more people to respond.
>>>       
>
>
> I would also think the survey is completely flawed if 12 people are
> considered a majority. Yes, you are right, Gary, this survey was a personal
> initiative from Erik. If we want to get more opinions, I would advocate for
> a larger survey that would be less "personal" and that would be organized in
> coordination with more people (for instance the Marketing Committee, whose
> members are advisors for the board in terms of visual identity).
>
>   
This is more a survey of active Wikimedians who frequenly participant in 
cross-project communications.  That is indeed a small and select group 
of individuals, not to mention that the survey was biased by not being 
randomly selected but by those who sought out the effort to participate 
in the survey.  If they had heard about the survey at all in the first 
place.  Still, it is a survey of active Wikimedians and if you ignore 
the conclusions based upon numerical statstics but instead concentrated 
on the different philosophical camps for each answer, it is perhaps a 
bit more accurate. 

As for numbers as they would relate to say Wikimedia board election 
participants, that would be something completely worth trying to follow 
up on with a survey that could be substantially simplified and reworded 
better, with an attempt to pull a random sample from that list of 
Wikimedia users who are demonstrating substantial activity.  With nearly 
2000 people participating in the elections so far (a few duplicates 
based on the data I saw... but pretty close to that number) I think you 
could get a good statistical sample from 10% of that number and find out 
what the ratios might actually be in terms of the rank and file 
Wikimedia users.  The suggestion here is that the support or lack of 
support for some of these ideas may be substantially different than the 
ratios suggested by the more informal and non-random survey method used 
here by Eric.

-- Robert Horning