Research talk:Wikimedia Foundation support

Under 18s

We have a lot of editors who are legally minors. What extra conditions if any do we need to put on their involvement in research surveys? WereSpielChequers 17:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an issue to be discussed here --DarTar 18:39, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Opt out from research

Do we need to have an opt out arrangement for editors who don't want research surveys, should we add an option to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#preftab-0 WereSpielChequers 17:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Aaron was suggesting a template to be included on the user page, but a preference would also make sense. The limit of this is that it implies a modification of the backend which reduces the flexibility, whereas using templates we could have one day different sets of opt-outs (e.g. I am happy to be contacted for surveys but not for interviews). --DarTar 18:37, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

As long as we make it easy for people I don't think it is that important, but I suspect that making it easy for people would require it to be a user preference. My assumption is that people are used to changing privacy preferences on most sites and adding templates on few, so a user preference would be the easiest way here. But if we have user testing showing the opposite, or the researchers were only interested in active pedians then templates would be fine. I appreciate that a template based solution would be much easier to implement, but in this case I suspect that the extra coding would be worthwhile. WereSpielChequers 15:13, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Media

There are several ways in which researchers can approach Wikimedians:

1. Site notices - this is under our control, is unlikely to be available for an individual researchers survey but can reach all active editors.
2. Email - we can't currently limit this, but if a researcher was seen to be using this excessively it is likely they would have their account restricted. I'm not sure what proportion of editors this can reach obviously only those who have set an email, but amongst those only those who still use that email. I suspect some editors who were once very active will have created Email accounts just for their Wikipedia stuff and they may stop checking them when they retire from Wikipedia.
3. Requests on user talkpages, again anyone doing this to excess is liable to be warned then blocked. Or blocked then warned if they are doing this in a semi automated way.
4. Requests on Mailing lists. This is quite common but I suspect only reaches a very skewed audience.

WereSpielChequers 17:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an issue to be discussed here. When I refer to "RCom support" for subject recruitment in this table I actually want to include also the review and discussion of the proposed recruitment method, not just technical support --DarTar 18:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Omnibus surveys

One way to reduce the repetition of multiple surveys all asking the same core questions is to allow researchers to add questions to the editor surveys that we do anyway, and then have them supplied with datsets that include the responses to their question and copies of the core questions that they are interested in. WereSpielChequers 17:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

API privileges

Are the "API privileges" the Researcher userright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researcher#Researcher if not what does API mean? WereSpielChequers 17:28, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we currently have just one single group combining different kinds of privileges. We may want to set up more granular permissions and set an explicit expiry date, but no matter how we handle this we will probably consider them as "special API privileges" for the purpose of defining requirements. --DarTar 18:33, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

OK I've added a note on the page. WereSpielChequers 19:00, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Sample Size

I don't think we've discuss sample sizes yet, I would like to suggest that we adopt the broad principles that:

1. The higher the score for the research project the more Wikimedians can be approached to participate in that research.
2. To prevent survey fatigue, Researchers be incentivised to collaborate with joint surveys by being allowed a larger sample size than any individual collaborator would have been allowed on their own (collaboration amongst researchers has several benefits to wikimedians, not least that there are many common questions across surveys). WereSpielChequers 16:14, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

+1 Ijon 18:20, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I also like that. -- Daniel Mietchen 20:18, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Reframing OA in terms of Libre and Gratis instead of Gold and Green

The current version of the requirements makes the distinction between Gold and Green OA. It might be better to frame the debate in terms of reusability on WMF projects, which is not a given with either of Gold or Green. Peter Suber has suggested to use the labels "libre" (free to reuse, adapt and redistribute) and "gratis" (free to access). I think it would make sense to follow that approach here. -- Daniel Mietchen 20:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)