[RCom-l] The tragedy of the Commons

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:46:48 +0000, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers at gmail.com> wrote:
> The controversy over Berkman is not in my view primarily a communication
> issue and it certainly isn't about the legitimacy of that survey. I
believe
> that the community trusts RCom as a regulator of research to know
whether
> research is legitimate or not.
> 
> A big part of the controversy is over advertising, and I'm not convinced
> that you can design a banner ad for a third party research survey that
> isn't seen by some as advertising for that third party. An Omnibus
survey
> could be a Wikimedia one and therefore I would argue an internal ad
rather
> than a third party one. Perhaps that isn't our only option, and maybe
there
> are alternative ways to solve that, one way would be to change policy to
> allow advertising for bona fide research. But that would be a difficult
one
> to sell to the community, particularly on the heels of a fundraising
drive
> where "Wikipedia doesn't take ads" was a core message.
> 
> The other aspect of being a regulator of research is the issue of how we
> control the amount of research requests made to the community. To my
mind
> that is fundamental to what we should be doing, and it is a major reason
> for my being on this committee.  But this is almost an opposite thought
> process to "promoting research".
> 
> There are two proposals that I've made as to how we do this, one would
be
> to contact everyone once a year with an Omnibus survey, the other rather
> more complex one is to throttle back research surveying by volume and
limit
> each campaign to a small subset of the community. The two approaches can
be
> hybridised by rewarding institutions that collaborate by allowing them
to
> use our systems to approach a larger proportion of editors. One reason
why
> I was opposed to the Berkman survey was that it was the worst of both
> worlds - one single research project going to all or almost all of our
most
> surveyed community.
> 
> I'm not convinced that the community currently has confidence in RCom to
> regulate the amount of research requests that wikimedians and especially
> English language Wikipedians are exposed to. Nor am I convinced that
> everyone on this committee regards that as our responsibility. To my
mind
> this gives us a couple of possibilities, one would be to try and agree a
> mechanism for limiting the amount of surveying that Wikimedians are
> subjected to, and then sell that to the community via a request for
> comment. One option in any such request for comment could be for the
> community to agree not to put any constraints on researchers, but I'd be
> surprised if that option got consensus however strongly it was promoted
by
> some members of RCom. The other possibility would be to clarify that the
> remit of this committee is to promote legitimate research by vetting
> proposals and otherwise communicating with the community; and to inform
the
> community that if it wants to put constraints on legitimate researchers
> contacting wikimedians via the site then it needs a an additional
process
> other than RCom.
> 
> WereSpielChequers
> 

Thanks for your ideas, which I find very much reasonable. I have an
immediate objection though. Not all research goes through RCom, and we have
no means to stop any single person or organization from sending a hundred
messages to talk pages. For instance, recently it was a survey with the
purpose of understanding the role of the female editors, or whatever the
purpose was (It is difficult for me to find a link immediately, but it can
be done, I guess it was run by Sarah Stierch and colleagues). They did not
bother to go to RCom, and I could imagine what the response were if we
demanded that for instance this survey would become part of Omnibus. Since
it looks almost inevitable that we have to go and ask the community
opinions at some stage, we probably also need to ask this question: Should
every research requiring subject recruitment be regulated (reviewed) by
RCom in advance, or may be the community (first robably of en.wp) just does
not want any regulation of the subject recruitment.

Cheers
Yaroslav