[Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>> > And yes, 80% of people ranked one of 4 options which I consider
>> > unacceptable
>> > first.  But then, 67% of people would have done so even if everyone chose
>> > their answers randomly.
>>
>> Now, how many of the 20% who wants their name cited would have given the
>> same response to something like: "Would you be happy to piss everyone off
>> if
>> your name does not appear in a list of about 100 authors of a Wikipedia
>> article cited by Xyz?"
>>
>
> Not clear.  That question wasn't asked.
>
> In fact, it's not clear that only 20% want their name cited.  If you ranked
> "full list of authors must always be copied" second, does that mean that you
> expect all authors to be listed, but just that you expect something else
> more, or does it mean that you don't expect all authors to be listed at
> all?  It's not clear.  The survey methodology was horrible.


Far be it for me to disagree with survey results that back up my
position on attribution :) ... but I actually agree with Anthony on
this one. This is a very small, self-selected sample; there would be
no harm or cost associated with turning it on for a much larger
percentage (or all) of logged-in users on the top-ten languages, not
just English or German alone, which both have peculiarities associated
with being the largest Wikipedia communities. I agree also there was
not a middle-ground option for those who think only the top (no matter
how that gets determined) authors should be attributed. On the other
hand, I can't recall for sure what the questions said, because I can't
see them, having already taken the survey... is there a meta page with
the questions somewhere?

I know there's time pressure on this... but on the other hand, we've
waited years :) It would be worthwhile to get better stats before
making sweeping generalizations about the community's desires.

-- Phoebe