[Foundation-l] Editor Survey, 2011

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Amir wrote a text that I posted on my blog. He wants proper tooling on Meta
to do the translation of the survey. Personally I will not translate at Meta
because I find it horribly inefficient.

My question to Mani is, can you PLEASE take up the suggestion of using the
existing and available tooling so that we can do a better job and become
more efficient ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

PS, you can even automate statistics for a project ...

http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/03/give-us-proper-translation-tools-at.html

On 10 March 2011 08:00, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> Mani Pande wrote:
> > It is with great pleasure that I would like to inform you that we are in
> > the process of the launching Wikipedia's second editor survey. The
> > survey is a redo of the UNU-Merit Survey that the foundation had
> > conducted last year. The survey covers a variety of topics, but its
> > primary goal is to understand the needs and participation of the editing
> > community. You can read more about the objectives of the survey in the
> > FAQ section in strategy wiki.  The survey will launch in the first week
> > of April.
>
> I looked at the survey that's currently being translated:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_2011/Translation/en
>
> How was this survey written? Who wrote it? Do the author(s) have any
> background in surveying?
>
> It seems very long and overly complex. Some of the questions it asks seem
> unnecessary given that you could query the information based on the user
> providing the input. Will the username of the person being surveyed be
> recorded and stored? If so, for how long? (I know you talked about
> releasing
> only anonymized data, but I imagine plenty of people would like to know how
> many people such as sysadmins or those administering the survey will have
> access to this data and for how long, if it's being stored at all.)
>
> The survey also seems to use some language that won't translate very easily
> (if at all) into other languages. Terminology and phrasing are particularly
> important in surveying, so this seems more important than it typically
> would
> be.
>
> If a user starts the survey, gets bored, and doesn't finish it, will the
> results be partially saved?
>
> Can a user choose not to answer particular questions? For example, if a
> user
> did not want to answer the gender question, can it simply be skipped? If it
> can be skipped, is this recorded as a skip ("I choose not to answer")?
>
> What survey software is going to be used to conduct the survey (and where
> will it be hosted)? I remember one of the past surveys used some
> particularly bad software that wouldn't allow simple user behavior, such as
> hitting the back button on your browser.
>
> Is the survey software smart enough to not ask questions if a previous
> question has been answered in a particular way? For example, if a user
> answers "no" to participating in future surveys, will the software still
> ask
> for an e-mail address?
>
> Why is it an option to choose "unregistered user" if the survey is only
> being provided to registered users?
>
> Certain terms in the draft are in bold (e.g., "Global South"). Will these
> be
> in bold/highlighted in the published survey? If so, why?
>
> A question about a user's sexual orientation is conspicuously missing
> (given
> that several other questions reference sexual orientation). Was this an
> intentional omission? If so, why?
>
> Is there a concern that a question such as "Do you know whether the
> Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia is a nonprofit or for-profit
> organization?" might have biased results given that the survey introduction
> specifically notes that the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit
> [organization]?
>
> Some questions will presumably have a long list of possible answers (e.g.,
> "What is/are your primary language(s)?"). Will the order of these possible
> answers be alphabetical, based on referring wiki (put English at the top
> for
> users who come from the English Wikipedia), or something else?
>
> Will referring site be tracked (assuming this survey is conducted on a
> separate domain)?
>
> Is there a reason only Wikipedia is being targeted? It seems to me that
> figuring out why other projects have such lower rates of participation
> would
> be pretty important/valuable information, for example. And is there a
> reason
> the page at the strategy wiki isn't more clear about the fact that this is
> limited to a specific wiki family (i.e., "Editor survey feedback" vs.
> "Wikipedia editor survey feedback")?
>
> Who will be in charge of determining which data is released and how? If a
> data trend is embarrassing to the Wikimedia Foundation, there might be an
> incentive to not release that data. Is there a way to combat this? Who has
> final say over what information is released?
>
> Apologies for the slew of questions. I skimmed the FAQ, but didn't see any
> of these answered. If I've simply missed some of these answers and they're
> posted elsewhere, feel free to just drop a link as a reply. :-)
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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