[Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

[Guillaume Paumier]

Hi Milos,

Milos Rancic wrote:
 >
> * And the winner: What is my reason to participate? And there is no
> *my* reason, even Commons is the free content project? No reason to
> answer.

The survey was designed specifically to avoid general statements. As you 
very well state yourself, general statements would be quite useless, and 
we want to know the underlying goal of the user. In the case you raise, 
what is the reason why you participate in a free content project? (you 
can answer off-list). I believe the answer would be one of those offered 
in the survey (but of course, I may be wrong).

> * Then, no possibility to say that I am definitely not working on
> "quality review, improvement & promotion of featured works"; just
> "rarely"; as well as that I didn't upload any animation. 

I don't really see the difference from a design point of view.

A similar concern I have heard is that some radio buttons should be 
non-mutually exclusive choices (e.g. for the "what is the main reason" 
questions). I agree it is more difficult with radio buttons, because we 
ask the user to actually think about what their priority is. But there 
again, it is more useful from a design point of view.

One thing I realized, though, was that two questions had an ambiguous 
wording: people wonder why they have to give reasons for not using 
Commons, or not participating, despite the fact that they said they do. 
These questions should read « what is the main reason that limits or 
hinders your use/participation ». Unfortunately, we can't change the 
survey once it is running.

> I really don't know which answers such survey is able to give? How
> many Commons participants have less than 100 edits? SQL queries may be
> more helpful.

All the work documents of the Multimedia Usability project are publicly 
available. You're welcome to read the following pages:
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Preliminary_user_research
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Initial_survey

I hope they will help you better understand the context of the survey.

Thanks for your constructive feedback. We may continue the discussion 
off-list if you wish.

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
Product Manager, Multimedia Usability
Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate