[Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

[James Alexander]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:06 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:

> >>... I have reason to believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia
> >> administrators are living below the poverty line, ...
> >
> >... citation desperately needed for this stat.
>
> In February I performed a survey of over 300 inactive English
> Wikipedia administrators based on a survey which had been approved on
> the Strategy Wiki more than two years prior. I added financial
> demographic questions to the survey. Steven Walling, who I thought had
> agreed to act as the Foundation point of contact for the survey during
> a public IRC office hour (he disagrees) has access to all of the
> original data I collected as a Google Forms document available to his
> Google Drive account.
>
> Shortly afterward, I was told that the survey was a violation of
> policy (two months later I was told it was not), and that I was
> violating the privacy policy because I asked for contact information
> to follow up. I was banned from Meta and told to contact the Legal
> Department if I had further questions. I did, and I am still waiting
> for their response. After several weeks without reply from the Legal
> Department, I followed up with some of the respondents, and performed
> an additional survey which I do not wish to describe in detail until I
> have an answer to my questions from the Legal Department.
>
> If the statistic is in doubt, I suggest that the Foundation perform
> their own survey of long term contributor financial status. As of May,
> by the way, more than 30 of the original survey respondent
> administrators had returned to active status, having made more than 50
> edits each after having gone at least six months without editing.
>
> Sincerely,
> James Salsman
>
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Do you mean this survey?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHZWdFQ0STlNbnl5TjJpNzd6RE9lYUE6MA

I'm sorry but if that's the case I would highly doubt that statistic and
basically ignore it. The only question about wealth is one that says:

| How financially secure are you?
| (Note: all questions are optional and individual responses will be kept
strictly confidential.)

and then gives a 1-5 scale from"'Impovrished[sic] to Wealthy"

You can't get anything like that stat from there and it doesn't even begin
to get into the idea of inactive admins not equalling admins or countless
other statistical anomalies.

James


---
James Alexander
jamesofur at gmail.com