(I originally sent this to WikiEn-l - but intended to send it here to foundation-l... my email reader got confused..)
Hi Dario, This proposal went through a long review process, involving community > forums, the Research Committee and various WMF departments since early 2010. > > The Berkman research team first approached WMF to discuss this study in > January 2010. They suggested a protocol to recruit English Wikipedia > contributors to participate in an early version of this study by March 2010 > and posted a proposal to the Administrators’ noticeboard to get community > feedback [6]. The community response at that time opposed the proposed > recruitment protocol (posting individual invitation messages on user talk > pages). It was suggested instead that the recruitment should be handled > through a CentralNotice banner to be displayed to registered editors, but > concerns were raised on how to minimize the disruption. > This is not a good summary of the conclusions there at all; and it is worrying that it has been read that way... You seem to have taken that discussion as implicit approval to run a CentralNotice banner - although that was certainly suggested as an option at the time I think it was reasonably expected for further community input later down the road. Certainly when I supported the suggestion of some sort of targeted site notice I envisioned a text link, or something. > Throughout the review process of this recruitment protocol, the research > team received constant feedback from the Foundation’s legal team, the > community department, the tech department and the communication team before > the campaign went live. > But not the community? > The campaign was announced in the CentralNotice calendar one month before > its launch [11] and the launch was with a post on the Foundation’s blog. > The banner was enabled on December 8 at 11:00pm UTC. 800+ participants > completed the study within a few hours since its launch. The banner was > then taken down by a meta-admin a few hours after the launch due to the > concerns described above. > Again; not announced to the community. There was a clear an present communication failure here. > We realize that despite an extensive review, the launch of this project > was not fully advertised on community forums. We plan to shortly resume the > campaign (for the time needed by the researchers to complete their > responses) after a full redesign of the recruitment protocol in order to > address the concerns raised by many of you over the last 24 hours. Here’s > what we are doing: > > • Provide you with better information about the project > We asked the research team to promptly set up a FAQ section on the project > page on Meta [13], and to be available to address any concern about the > study on the discussion page of this project. The project page on Meta will > be linked from the recruitment banner itself. > > • Redesign the banner > We understand that the banner design has been interpreted by some as > ad-like (even if the goal was to make clear that this study was not being > run by WMF, as it implied a redirection to a third party website for > performing the experiment). In coordination with the research team, we will > come up with a banner design that will be more in line with the concerns > expressed by the community (for instance by removing the logos from the > banner). > > • Make privacy terms as transparent as possible > Upon clicking on the banner, participants accept to share their username, > edit count and user privileges with the research team. The previous version > didn’t make it explicit and we are working to address this problem. To make > the process totally transparent we will make the acceptance of these terms > explicit in the banner itself. > > Once redirected to the landing page, participants will have to accept the > terms of participation in order to enter the study. The project is funded > by the European Research Council: the data collected in this study is > subject to strict European privacy protocols. The research team will use > this data for research purposes only. The research team is not exposed to > and does not record participants’ IP addresses. > You need to tell this *to the community*. Otherwise the discussion will simply strike up again once you re-enable it. I notice you posted this exact same message to wikipedia-en-l. The lack of recent discussion on that list should tell you how effective that is as a communication tool. The vast majority of English Wikipedia discussion occurs on-wiki, and the vast majority of editors prefer discussions to occur on-wiki. If you want to interact with the community, and in this case I think you have to, then you really have to do so on-wiki :) We would like to hear from you on the redesign of the banner to make sure > it meets the expectations of the community and doesn’t lend itself to any > kind of confusion. We will post the new banners to Meta and try to address > all pending questions before we resume the campaign. > Most en.wiki editors don't hang out on Meta - and I think it is reasonable not to expect them to. Especially as this is purely a project focused on English Wikipedia; it needs to be discussed on English Wikipedia. If you need help with the right places/protocol then I would be happy to oblige. This once again highlights the huge disconnect between Wikipedians, the foundations and the various higher level commitees. It's the same every time - something big appears, the community get cross/upset/confused, the foundation etc. express incredulity... and no one talks. My final comment is this; I am fairly active around here. I am on foundation-l, I read meta for important notices, and I am active on en.wiki. And the first time I knew about this (since the Admin Noticeboard discussion some months back) was when the banner appeared. So how anyone else stood a chance of giving input I do not know :) Whilst much of the discussion was public, it was "hidden". And the key failing here is in not making it open and accessible. Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l