*Hi everyone,
It's been a bit since I last emailed this list (or any list, for that matter!)... you may remember me, I worked at the Foundation last year in the Community Department, working with Philippe on any number of issues, as well as with the OTRS team. I've come back to work on a short term project with the Foundation, and I have to say it's great to be back! (and a great break from my Master's thesis!)
We're getting ready to run the next version of the Editor Survey, for August 2012. This will be the third incarnation we've run since 2011. As with the prior incarnations of the survey, we'll be looking at a variety of topics, this time with the goal of not only understanding your needs and pressing issues while interacting with fellow editors, but also focusing on editors' satisfaction with the work of the Foundation.
The last time we ran an editor survey, it was completed by over 6,000 respondents. When you break that down, it means that each minute of time demanded by the survey corresponds to 100 hours of Wikipedians' time. We want to make sure that this time is spent wisely, ensuring that the questions we have are worded clearly, don't cause confusion, and will generate meaningful answers. So we'd like to ask you to take a look at the survey, and give us feedback on the questions. You can find them here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012... https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012/Questions ... and please leave your feedback on the talk page there so we can keep the discussion in one place :)
You can find out more information about the survey here:
Also, we are planning an IRC Office Hour on the survey, this **Tuesday, July 31 at 1700 UTC.** (See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hoursfor general information about IRC Office hours)
I know there has been some discussion about offering Office Hours in a broader range of times, and I know this time may not be the greatest for some... but this was the best time we could find currently.
Thanks everyone!!
-Christine Wikimedia Foundation*
On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:28 PM, Christine Moellenberndt < [email protected]> wrote:
*Hi everyone,
It's been a bit since I last emailed this list (or any list, for that matter!)... you may remember me, I worked at the Foundation last year in the Community Department, working with Philippe on any number of issues, as well as with the OTRS team. I've come back to work on a short term project with the Foundation, and I have to say it's great to be back! (and a great break from my Master's thesis!)
We're getting ready to run the next version of the Editor Survey, for August 2012. This will be the third incarnation we've run since 2011. As with the prior incarnations of the survey, we'll be looking at a variety of topics, this time with the goal of not only understanding your needs and pressing issues while interacting with fellow editors, but also focusing on editors' satisfaction with the work of the Foundation.
The last time we ran an editor survey, it was completed by over 6,000 respondents. When you break that down, it means that each minute of time demanded by the survey corresponds to 100 hours of Wikipedians' time. We want to make sure that this time is spent wisely, ensuring that the questions we have are worded clearly, don't cause confusion, and will generate meaningful answers. So we'd like to ask you to take a look at the survey, and give us feedback on the questions. You can find them here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Wikipedia_** Editor_Survey_August_2012/**Questionshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012/Questions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/**index.php?title=Research:** Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_**August_2012/Questionshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012/Questions
... and please leave your feedback on the talk page there so we can keep the discussion in one place :)
You can find out more information about the survey here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Research:Wikipedia_** Editor_Survey_August_2012https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012
Also, we are planning an IRC Office Hour on the survey, this **Tuesday, July 31 at 1700 UTC.** (See https://meta.wikimedia.org/** wiki/IRC_office_hoursforhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hoursforgeneral information about IRC Office hours)
Just a quick reminder that this is happening two hours from now.
I know there has been some discussion about offering Office Hours in a broader range of times, and I know this time may not be the greatest for some... but this was the best time we could find currently.
Thanks everyone!!
-Christine Wikimedia Foundation* ______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected].**org [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Hi, sorry to fish out a very old message, but since the survey is about to go live, I would like to share some concerns I have about it. Unfortunately, I was on holidays as this announcement came out, so couldn't do it earlier.
I find the idea of an editor's survey to be extremely important, since it is (among other) a good indicator of how the editing community perceives the atmosphere in the projects, the evolution of the software and such things. However, I feel this survey is a bit of a missed opportunity on different aspects.
There is a mix of "feedback about the projects and the community" and "satisfaction about the WMF", which does not, in my opinion, quite fit together. I find we should separate those things so as to keep people free of personal opinions about what the organisation may or may not do for/with them and let them focus better on their editor's experience as such. Moreover, this would allow for more questions about editing, maybe a short presentation of new tools, rating them etc. which seems to be quite absent from this questionnaire. For example, I would love to see a question in the technology part about whether people want/edit from their mobile device, or if they are familiar with the mobile apps and use them, that kind of stuff. (rationale given for taking these questions out was length of the survey, but I think these things are much more relevant to the well-editing of the contributors than how well they rate the WMF work). Not to mention that trying to get some feedback from sister projects would be good also (Commons is already a good first step).
If, however, we're going to mix editor's experience and satisfaction about Wikimedia, I am cruelly missing any kind of feedback question about the work of the chapters and/or other organisations or groups in the Wikimedia Universe that would give people the right scope about what is happening in a more "offline" kind of way. Of course, we could do a separate survey for chapters, but if we're truly an international movement, then all Wikimedia entities that support/interact with the community probably would benefit from being put in the same bag in order to fine tune their support and help for the Wikimedia communities.
Sue in Washington at Wikimania pulled out the results of one question that was asked in the editor's survey about whether people were satisfied about the work of the Foundation and the work of the chapters. She underlined herself that the results to this question were probably difficult to interpret out of the box since at no point in the survey was there a question about whether people were aware that there was a chapter in their country, which would have qulified the results a bit. This was already quite criticized last time, yet the question is still there, unchanged, and without more context than it had last time. (under FINAL THOUGHTS). In short people are asked to rate the Foundation about everything it does, while the chapters are never mentionned, and then people are asked to rate the work of both. Interesting way to look at it.
We're doing much better, but there is still some English Wikipedia centrism in Question F2 for example. ;-) : How well do you believe the Foundation supports: English Wikipedia? Wikipedia sites in other languages?
Finally, what I regret most, is that so little time was allocated to reviewing this survey collaboratively. There was about 20 days to review, comment, give feedback, translate etc. and this in the mist of the summer holiday for a big part of our community. When I see such processes as the ToS revision [1] conducted successfully allowing for 120 days of discussion, and such surveys rushed through the summer, when their data will probably be used to decide much of the strategic orientation of the next year, I'm thinking we're missing out on trying to collect data that is truly relevant to the work we do and that helps us to review our orientations and adjust how well we support our editing community.
Best,
Delphine
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use
On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 7:28 AM, Christine Moellenberndt [email protected] wrote:
*Hi everyone,
It's been a bit since I last emailed this list (or any list, for that matter!)... you may remember me, I worked at the Foundation last year in the Community Department, working with Philippe on any number of issues, as well as with the OTRS team. I've come back to work on a short term project with the Foundation, and I have to say it's great to be back! (and a great break from my Master's thesis!)
We're getting ready to run the next version of the Editor Survey, for August 2012. This will be the third incarnation we've run since 2011. As with the prior incarnations of the survey, we'll be looking at a variety of topics, this time with the goal of not only understanding your needs and pressing issues while interacting with fellow editors, but also focusing on editors' satisfaction with the work of the Foundation.
The last time we ran an editor survey, it was completed by over 6,000 respondents. When you break that down, it means that each minute of time demanded by the survey corresponds to 100 hours of Wikipedians' time. We want to make sure that this time is spent wisely, ensuring that the questions we have are worded clearly, don't cause confusion, and will generate meaningful answers. So we'd like to ask you to take a look at the survey, and give us feedback on the questions. You can find them here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012... https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012/Questions ... and please leave your feedback on the talk page there so we can keep the discussion in one place :)
You can find out more information about the survey here:
Also, we are planning an IRC Office Hour on the survey, this **Tuesday, July 31 at 1700 UTC.** (See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hoursfor general information about IRC Office hours)
I know there has been some discussion about offering Office Hours in a broader range of times, and I know this time may not be the greatest for some... but this was the best time we could find currently.
Thanks everyone!!
-Christine Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 5:04 AM, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
Hi, sorry to fish out a very old message, but since the survey is about to go live, I would like to share some concerns I have about it. Unfortunately, I was on holidays as this announcement came out, so couldn't do it earlier.
I find the idea of an editor's survey to be extremely important, since it is (among other) a good indicator of how the editing community perceives the atmosphere in the projects, the evolution of the software and such things. However, I feel this survey is a bit of a missed opportunity on different aspects.
There is a mix of "feedback about the projects and the community" and "satisfaction about the WMF", which does not, in my opinion, quite fit together. I find we should separate those things so as to keep people free of personal opinions about what the organisation may or may not do for/with them and let them focus better on their editor's experience as such. Moreover, this would allow for more questions about editing, maybe a short presentation of new tools, rating them etc. which seems to be quite absent from this questionnaire. For example, I would love to see a question in the technology part about whether people want/edit from their mobile device, or if they are familiar with the mobile apps and use them, that kind of stuff. (rationale given for taking these questions out was length of the survey, but I think these things are much more relevant to the well-editing of the contributors than how well they rate the WMF work). Not to mention that trying to get some feedback from sister projects would be good also (Commons is already a good first step).
If, however, we're going to mix editor's experience and satisfaction about Wikimedia, I am cruelly missing any kind of feedback question about the work of the chapters and/or other organisations or groups in the Wikimedia Universe that would give people the right scope about what is happening in a more "offline" kind of way. Of course, we could do a separate survey for chapters, but if we're truly an international movement, then all Wikimedia entities that support/interact with the community probably would benefit from being put in the same bag in order to fine tune their support and help for the Wikimedia communities.
Sue in Washington at Wikimania pulled out the results of one question that was asked in the editor's survey about whether people were satisfied about the work of the Foundation and the work of the chapters. She underlined herself that the results to this question were probably difficult to interpret out of the box since at no point in the survey was there a question about whether people were aware that there was a chapter in their country, which would have qulified the results a bit.
I'm not sure she actually said that. In any case, it is wrong - question D6 in the last survey asked if there was a Wikimedia chapter in the country where the respondent lived (https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:December_2011_Wikipedia_Ed... ).
This was already quite criticized last time, yet the question is still there, unchanged, and without more context than it had last time. (under FINAL THOUGHTS).
We tried to avoid modifying questions in order to preserve consistence and be able to do some longitudinal analysis (as it was already begun for that question in http://blog.wikimedia.org/?p=14296 ).
Still, I was aware that there had been some objections to that question by chapter representatives (which I don't assume have to do with the fact that respondents rated chapters' performance lower than that of other entities in the two previous surveys), and looked into these concerns while the present questionnaire was prepared; I also reached out to one of the critics in person at Wikimania. But I still haven't seen a compelling argument why the way the question is asked should be biased against chapters. The argument that the opinion of Wikimedians who live in countries without chapter should not count seems weak to me, e.g. because the projects that the work of chapters aims to support are international, and because the question asked about chapters in general, not one particular chapter.
In any case, in parallel to preparing the upcoming survey, we have recently been compiling the public dataset with the anonymized responses from the last survey, which was uploaded yesterday here: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/surveys/editorsurveynov-dec2011/ Using this, anyone can do the analysis you suggest and check if ratings differed significantly in chapter/non-chapter countries.
In short people are asked to rate the Foundation about everything it does, while the chapters are never mentionned, and then people are asked to rate the work of both. Interesting way to look at it.
We're doing much better, but there is still some English Wikipedia centrism in Question F2 for example. ;-) : How well do you believe the Foundation supports: English Wikipedia? Wikipedia sites in other languages?
Finally, what I regret most, is that o little time was allocated to reviewing this survey collaboratively. There was about 20 days to review, comment, give feedback, translate etc. and this in the mist of the summer holiday for a big part of our community. When I see such processes as the ToS revision [1] conducted successfully allowing for 120 days of discussion, and such surveys rushed through the summer, when their data will probably be used to decide much of the strategic orientation of the next year, I'm thinking we're missing out on trying to collect data that is truly relevant to the work we do and that helps us to review our orientations and adjust how well we support our editing community.
Of course there are lots of interesting and important questions that had to be left out of this survey. As said earlier, the idea is to run the editor survey more frequently from now on, probably quarterly and in a more lightweight version, with a different focus in each.
Best,
Delphine
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use
On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 7:28 AM, Christine Moellenberndt [email protected] wrote:
*Hi everyone,
It's been a bit since I last emailed this list (or any list, for that matter!)... you may remember me, I worked at the Foundation last year in the Community Department, working with Philippe on any number of issues, as well as with the OTRS team. I've come back to work on a short term project with the Foundation, and I have to say it's great to be back! (and a great break from my Master's thesis!)
We're getting ready to run the next version of the Editor Survey, for August 2012. This will be the third incarnation we've run since 2011. As with the prior incarnations of the survey, we'll be looking at a variety of topics, this time with the goal of not only understanding your needs and pressing issues while interacting with fellow editors, but also focusing on editors' satisfaction with the work of the Foundation.
The last time we ran an editor survey, it was completed by over 6,000 respondents. When you break that down, it means that each minute of time demanded by the survey corresponds to 100 hours of Wikipedians' time. We want to make sure that this time is spent wisely, ensuring that the questions we have are worded clearly, don't cause confusion, and will generate meaningful answers. So we'd like to ask you to take a look at the survey, and give us feedback on the questions. You can find them here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012... https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_August_2012/Questions ... and please leave your feedback on the talk page there so we can keep the discussion in one place :)
You can find out more information about the survey here:
Also, we are planning an IRC Office Hour on the survey, this **Tuesday, July 31 at 1700 UTC.** (See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hoursfor general information about IRC Office hours)
I know there has been some discussion about offering Office Hours in a broader range of times, and I know this time may not be the greatest for some... but this was the best time we could find currently.
Thanks everyone!!
-Christine Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
-- @notafish
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Tilman Bayer [email protected] wrote:
I'm not sure she actually said that. In any case, it is wrong - question D6 in the last survey asked if there was a Wikimedia chapter in the country where the respondent lived (https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:December_2011_Wikipedia_Ed... ).
My bad, glad it was there. And yes she did. Maybe not in those exact words, but she did put the results into context.
This was already quite criticized last time, yet the question is still there, unchanged, and without more context than it had last time. (under FINAL THOUGHTS).
We tried to avoid modifying questions in order to preserve consistence and be able to do some longitudinal analysis (as it was already begun for that question in http://blog.wikimedia.org/?p=14296 ).
So if a question is poorly phrased, we'll continue having it till the end of time to preserve consistency? Mind you, I do want that question in, I just want it within the same context frame that is given to the same question about the Foundation. And I'm also missing a question about other entities that might actually help Wikimedians that we're or we're not aware of.
Still, I was aware that there had been some objections to that question by chapter representatives (which I don't assume have to do with the fact that respondents rated chapters' performance lower than that of other entities in the two previous surveys), and looked into these concerns while the present questionnaire was prepared; I also reached out to one of the critics in person at Wikimania. But I still haven't seen a compelling argument why the way the question is asked should be biased against chapters. The argument that the opinion of Wikimedians who live in countries without chapter should not count seems weak to me, e.g. because the projects that the work of chapters aims to support are international, and because the question asked about chapters in general, not one particular chapter.
That is not the argument I was trying to make (ie. voices of Wikimedians in a country without chapter don't count). Rather, there is a long list of things the Foundation does, where people are asked whether they knew about it, or not. And after that, right when people have been made aware of everything the Foundation does, they are asked to rate the work of the Foundation. The same question about the chapters comes after absolutely nothing has been said about chapter work, which, I believe, does introduce a bias. In short, people are being asked to rate something they *at this point in the survey* have an idea about (for the WMF) although they might have had no idea about it before starting the survey. All I'm asking is that we review the context in which this question is being asked so results make more sense.
In any case, in parallel to preparing the upcoming survey, we have recently been compiling the public dataset with the anonymized responses from the last survey, which was uploaded yesterday here: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/surveys/editorsurveynov-dec2011/ Using this, anyone can do the analysis you suggest and check if ratings differed significantly in chapter/non-chapter countries.
That's great. Thanks. For the record, I'm not expecting the results to be so extremely different, but I think the fact that they might be or might not be is extremely important to know.
Finally, what I regret most, is that o little time was allocated to reviewing this survey collaboratively. There was about 20 days to review, comment, give feedback, translate etc. and this in the mist of the summer holiday for a big part of our community. When I see such processes as the ToS revision [1] conducted successfully allowing for 120 days of discussion, and such surveys rushed through the summer, when their data will probably be used to decide much of the strategic orientation of the next year, I'm thinking we're missing out on trying to collect data that is truly relevant to the work we do and that helps us to review our orientations and adjust how well we support our editing community.
Of course there are lots of interesting and important questions that had to be left out of this survey. As said earlier, the idea is to run the editor survey more frequently from now on, probably quarterly and in a more lightweight version, with a different focus in each.
That's good news and I hope the collaborative process can be reinforced and more time is allowed for comments, reviews, changes and finetuning.
Best,
Delphine
Hi Delphine,
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Tilman Bayer [email protected] wrote:
...
Still, I was aware that there had been some objections to that question by chapter representatives (which I don't assume have to do with the fact that respondents rated chapters' performance lower than that of other entities in the two previous surveys), and looked into these concerns while the present questionnaire was prepared; I also reached out to one of the critics in person at Wikimania. But I still haven't seen a compelling argument why the way the question is asked should be biased against chapters. The argument that the opinion of Wikimedians who live in countries without chapter should not count seems weak to me, e.g. because the projects that the work of chapters aims to support are international, and because the question asked about chapters in general, not one particular chapter.
That is not the argument I was trying to make (ie. voices of Wikimedians in a country without chapter don't count). Rather, there is a long list of things the Foundation does, where people are asked whether they knew about it, or not. And after that, right when people have been made aware of everything the Foundation does, they are asked to rate the work of the Foundation. The same question about the chapters comes after absolutely nothing has been said about chapter work, which, I believe, does introduce a bias. In short, people are being asked to rate something they *at this point in the survey* have an idea about (for the WMF) although they might have had no idea about it before starting the survey. All I'm asking is that we review the context in which this question is being asked so results make more sense.
OK, after some other people also remarked that preceding this question by other questions which conveyed quite some information about the Foundation's activities but not about the chapters' activities. we have now rearranged the questions so that this is no longer the case.
This is a bit of a compromise regarding the structuring of the questionnaire into sections, but fortunately it could be done without invalidating existing translations or changing the variables of the resulting dataset.
Also, the launch of the survey had been postponed into this month for various reasons, including allowing more time to respond to feedback like this.
Hello Tilman,
On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 7:24 PM, Tilman Bayer [email protected] wrote:
Hi Delphine,
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Tilman Bayer [email protected] wrote:
...
Still, I was aware that there had been some objections to that question by chapter representatives (which I don't assume have to do with the fact that respondents rated chapters' performance lower than that of other entities in the two previous surveys), and looked into these concerns while the present questionnaire was prepared; I also reached out to one of the critics in person at Wikimania. But I still haven't seen a compelling argument why the way the question is asked should be biased against chapters. The argument that the opinion of Wikimedians who live in countries without chapter should not count seems weak to me, e.g. because the projects that the work of chapters aims to support are international, and because the question asked about chapters in general, not one particular chapter.
That is not the argument I was trying to make (ie. voices of Wikimedians in a country without chapter don't count). Rather, there is a long list of things the Foundation does, where people are asked whether they knew about it, or not. And after that, right when people have been made aware of everything the Foundation does, they are asked to rate the work of the Foundation. The same question about the chapters comes after absolutely nothing has been said about chapter work, which, I believe, does introduce a bias. In short, people are being asked to rate something they *at this point in the survey* have an idea about (for the WMF) although they might have had no idea about it before starting the survey. All I'm asking is that we review the context in which this question is being asked so results make more sense.
OK, after some other people also remarked that preceding this question by other questions which conveyed quite some information about the Foundation's activities but not about the chapters' activities. we have now rearranged the questions so that this is no longer the case.
This is a bit of a compromise regarding the structuring of the questionnaire into sections, but fortunately it could be done without invalidating existing translations or changing the variables of the resulting dataset.
Thanks. I will not hide that I am still not sure whether we don't now have two "out of context questions" instead of just one, but I guess it's what we could do for this round, so thank you for doing this.
I sincerely hope that we can all together revisit this part of the survey to give results that can be used by all of us to increase satisfaction and performance in the future. Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Best,
Delphine
Hey
So I might have missed some mails on this thread (perhaps because they were not posted on this public list) but I highly doubt that Sue perform surveys that do not have a real-world impact on our operations. I know that the results of the previous surveys were used in several discussions (including at a board level) in order to provide more insight….
On the other hand, using these surveys to gain more insight is not the same as using them to "hold each other accountable" which is sometimes easy to do. Every survey (and questions) has a lots of interpretation magic which can easily lead you astray, but I don't have to tell you (the community) this :)
Jan-Bart
On 10 Sep 2012, at 23:01, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Dear Jan-Bart, Unfortunately the exact wordings was "I'll point out also that there are zero real-world implications for the survey results".
Because we all agree that there is now such thing like a zero real-world impact survey, we really hope that the raw results of this survey will be made as public as possible (privacy issue), and that in the future , survey including question about WMF partners (chapters are not the only ones) will be done since the very beginning in collaboration with all the partners involved.
sincerely
Charles
___________________________________________________________ Charles ANDRES, Chairman "Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
Le 12 sept. 2012 à 16:14, Jan-Bart de Vreede [email protected] a écrit :
Hey
So I might have missed some mails on this thread (perhaps because they were not posted on this public list) but I highly doubt that Sue perform surveys that do not have a real-world impact on our operations. I know that the results of the previous surveys were used in several discussions (including at a board level) in order to provide more insight….
On the other hand, using these surveys to gain more insight is not the same as using them to "hold each other accountable" which is sometimes easy to do. Every survey (and questions) has a lots of interpretation magic which can easily lead you astray, but I don't have to tell you (the community) this :)
Jan-Bart
On 10 Sep 2012, at 23:01, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 3:57 AM, charles andrès <[email protected]
wrote:
Because we all agree that there is now such thing like a zero real-world impact survey, we really hope that the raw results of this survey will be made as public as possible (privacy issue), and that in the future , survey including question about WMF partners (chapters are not the only ones) will be done since the very beginning in collaboration with all the partners involved.
Yes. What would be better ways to improve communication and collaboration? There were a couple of months of very gradual feedback before a recent surge of interest close to the planned launch date. The suggestions for making these surveys regular, perhaps quarterly, would allow for continuous participation.
And some parallel surveys prepared by different statisticians/analysts might be useful as well. There are economies of scale in consolidating into a single survey, but there are also systemic biases that are hard to avoid if there is *only* a single survey. A few large surveys, judiciously broadcast [not everyone has to see every survey announcement] might address both issues.
SJ
On 9/12/12 4:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
Hey
So I might have missed some mails on this thread (perhaps because they were not posted on this public list) but I highly doubt that Sue perform surveys that do not have a real-world impact on our operations. I know that the results of the previous surveys were used in several discussions (including at a board level) in order to provide more insight….
Indeed. I agree. These surveys do have real-world impact, which is why we objected to a survey asking people from all over the world how they would rate Wikimedia Chapters activities when 1) there is likely no chapter in their country 2) they may have no idea that a "wikimedia chapter" is for example "Wikimedia Washington DC" or "Wikimedia Israel" 3) all chapters are collectively considered regardless of individual differences
And since you comment on that specific sentence
"I'll point out also that there are zero real-world implications for the survey results."
I'd like to clarify that these exact words come from Sue herself in an email sent on the 10th of September on internal-l.
I am glad to read that you disagree with that statement and recognize that there is real-world impact.
(did not want to comment any further on that problematic survey, but wanted to attribute statement properly)
Flo
On the other hand, using these surveys to gain more insight is not the same as using them to "hold each other accountable" which is sometimes easy to do. Every survey (and questions) has a lots of interpretation magic which can easily lead you astray, but I don't have to tell you (the community) this :)
Jan-Bart
On 10 Sep 2012, at 23:01, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Hey
So someone sent me the internal-l mail and I do think that the "zero real-world" thing is taken out of context here. But a few points
1) Lets not have these discussions on internal-l, there is no reason to not have those in public 2) See 1) 3) I am sure that the data set allows us to see chapter's individual responses, depending on whether or not we know the country (I would figure we do?) 4) Doesn't every survey contain questions that don't apply to the whole responding audience?
Jan-Bart
On 14 sep. 2012, at 17:05, Florence Devouard [email protected] wrote:
On 9/12/12 4:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
Hey
So I might have missed some mails on this thread (perhaps because they were not posted on this public list) but I highly doubt that Sue perform surveys that do not have a real-world impact on our operations. I know that the results of the previous surveys were used in several discussions (including at a board level) in order to provide more insight….
Indeed. I agree. These surveys do have real-world impact, which is why we objected to a survey asking people from all over the world how they would rate Wikimedia Chapters activities when
- there is likely no chapter in their country
- they may have no idea that a "wikimedia chapter" is for example "Wikimedia Washington DC" or "Wikimedia Israel"
- all chapters are collectively considered regardless of individual differences
And since you comment on that specific sentence
"I'll point out also that there are zero real-world implications for the survey results."
I'd like to clarify that these exact words come from Sue herself in an email sent on the 10th of September on internal-l.
I am glad to read that you disagree with that statement and recognize that there is real-world impact.
(did not want to comment any further on that problematic survey, but wanted to attribute statement properly)
Flo
On the other hand, using these surveys to gain more insight is not the same as using them to "hold each other accountable" which is sometimes easy to do. Every survey (and questions) has a lots of interpretation magic which can easily lead you astray, but I don't have to tell you (the community) this :)
Jan-Bart
On 10 Sep 2012, at 23:01, Delphine Ménard [email protected] wrote:
Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Hi,
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:08 PM, Jan-bart de Vreede <[email protected]
wrote:
Hey
So someone sent me the internal-l mail and I do think that the "zero real-world" thing is taken out of context here. But a few points
- Lets not have these discussions on internal-l, there is no reason to
not have those in public 2) See 1) 3) I am sure that the data set allows us to see chapter's individual responses, depending on whether or not we know the country (I would figure we do?)
I believe the biggest issue from a methodological point of view, once you filter out responses from non-chapter countries, is that the question asks for a composite average rating on chapterS performance. There is doubt that the results obtained in this way would be valid or reliable measures of chapters ratings. (On the face of it, if one has to rate together a well-performing known organization and 38 unknown ones, it is unlikely that he would adjust his rating of the known organization upwards to get to an average, it seems more likely that he would do a downwards adjustment and perhaps vice-versa in case of a low-performing local organization; different people would apply different adjustments and it becomes doubtful whether we can ever get an accurate average from a simple question asking for opinion about 39 organizations. Asking individuals to rate one chapter if relevant and than taking the [weighed] average of the ratings from the 39 relevant countries would be more accurate perhaps. And as a control group, people from outside chapter countries could be asked to rate all chapters in one question to see if there is anything to learn there from the answers.) In general, when a concept is complex, surveys tend to ask more questions to get a better picture, just as the WESI-score on Wikipedia satisfaction is a composite from a number of questions on this survey.
- Doesn't every survey contain questions that don't apply to the whole
responding audience?
Probably not - depends on the survey design and goals.
Best regards, Bence
Jan-Bart
On 14 sep. 2012, at 17:05, Florence Devouard [email protected] wrote:
On 9/12/12 4:14 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote:
Hey
So I might have missed some mails on this thread (perhaps because they
were not posted on this public list) but I highly doubt that Sue perform surveys that do not have a real-world impact on our operations. I know that the results of the previous surveys were used in several discussions (including at a board level) in order to provide more insight….
Indeed. I agree. These surveys do have real-world impact, which is why
we objected to a survey asking people from all over the world how they would rate Wikimedia Chapters activities when
- there is likely no chapter in their country
- they may have no idea that a "wikimedia chapter" is for example
"Wikimedia Washington DC" or "Wikimedia Israel"
- all chapters are collectively considered regardless of individual
differences
And since you comment on that specific sentence
"I'll point out also that there are zero real-world implications for the
survey results."
I'd like to clarify that these exact words come from Sue herself in an
email sent on the 10th of September on internal-l.
I am glad to read that you disagree with that statement and recognize
that there is real-world impact.
(did not want to comment any further on that problematic survey, but
wanted to attribute statement properly)
Flo
On the other hand, using these surveys to gain more insight is not the
same as using them to "hold each other accountable" which is sometimes easy to do. Every survey (and questions) has a lots of interpretation magic which can easily lead you astray, but I don't have to tell you (the community) this :)
Jan-Bart
On 10 Sep 2012, at 23:01, Delphine Ménard <
[email protected]> wrote:
Contrarily to Sue, I do think that these surveys (should) have a real-world impact and (should) keep us all on our toes, fine tuned to the critisicism, needs and wishes of the editors of the WIkimedia projects. As such I expect us to make sure that we do get as precise a picture as possible of what those are.
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
On 14/09/12 18:08, Jan-bart de Vreede wrote:
- Doesn't every survey contain questions that don't apply to the whole responding audience?
No, because the answer would not be terribly useful. In all surveys I have seen in my work life [statistics work -- I don't design much surveys myself, but reply to a lot of them from different horizons :-], this does never happen.
Typically, the filtering for a question about chapters would be something like this (simplified and written quickly):
1) Do you know any organization active within the Wikimedia movement ? (free text fields allow people to enter names)
2) This page contain a list of organizations active within the Wikimedia movement; please tick all the ones you know (even if you have only heard the name)
(a list follows, with maybe "WMF", "Local chapters in general", and a list of individual chapters)
3) People are then asked to rate and/or comment each entity that was mentioned under (1) or (2).
This way, not only do we avoid having people give their opinion on a topic they've never heard about, but we also get two different levels of knowledge on the topic (either the user knew it well enough to list the name, or he had to be reminded).
Frédéric
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Bence Damokos [email protected] wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:08 PM, Jan-bart de Vreede <[email protected]
wrote:
Hey
So someone sent me the internal-l mail and I do think that the "zero real-world" thing is taken out of context here. But a few points
- I am sure that the data set allows us to see chapter's individual
responses, depending on whether or not we know the country (I would figure we do?)
The survey asks indeed for the country where the respondent lives, and using that data, we plan to evaluate the results of the performance rating question a little differently this time. On Meta, I have said more about the objections against the part asking about editors' perception of chapters.
I believe the biggest issue from a methodological point of view, once you filter out responses from non-chapter countries, is that the question asks for a composite average rating on chapterS performance. There is doubt that the results obtained in this way would be valid or reliable measures of chapters ratings. (On the face of it, if one has to rate together a well-performing known organization and 38 unknown ones, it is unlikely that he would adjust his rating of the known organization upwards to get to an average, it seems more likely that he would do a downwards adjustment and perhaps vice-versa in case of a low-performing local organization; different people would apply different adjustments and it becomes doubtful whether we can ever get an accurate average from a simple question asking for opinion about 39 organizations.
Interesting thoughts, but I did not see an argument here why a downwards adjustment should be considered more likely than an upwards adjustment. Anyway, every opinion survey, say the many Gallup polls, has to deal with the basic fact that the respondents can have very different levels of knowledge about the subject which they are asked to rate. Rather than blindly ignoring this, many readers of opinion surveys are actively aware of it and for example, are interested in how opinions change when knowledge improves or decreases among respondents. And yes, these opinions may be subjective, or unfair, having been unduly influenced by isolated success stories or scandals. (In our own opinion.)
Or to put it differently, with these ratings of individual chapters - or indeed the rating of the Foundation in the same question - you would likewise have the issue that respondents judge the whole entity's work despite often knowing only small parts of it; any kind of such question could be attacked for merely asking about a "composite average" where parts are missing from the respondent's knowledge. In reality, at one point one just has to define a certain number as representing the respondent's opinion about a certain thing, and measure it without second-guessing the (non-existing) formula by which the respondent calculates it in their heads as an average of other ratings.
Asking individuals to rate one chapter if relevant and than taking the [weighed] average of the ratings from the 39 relevant countries would be more accurate perhaps. And as a control group, people from outside chapter countries could be asked to rate all chapters in one question to see if there is anything to learn there from the answers.) In general, when a concept is complex, surveys tend to ask more questions to get a better picture, just as the WESI-score on Wikipedia satisfaction is a composite from a number of questions on this survey.
This is often called a latent variable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_variable ). It is used here because some questions are difficult to ask directly for (mainly) language reasons - e.g., "how satisfied are you with... " would be too ambiguous.
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:57 AM, charles andrès [email protected] wrote:
Dear Jan-Bart, Unfortunately the exact wordings was "I'll point out also that there are zero real-world implications for the survey results".
Because we all agree that there is now such thing like a zero real-world impact survey, we really hope that the raw results of this survey will be made as public as possible (privacy issue), and that in the future , survey including question about WMF partners (chapters are not the only ones) will be done since the very beginning in collaboration with all the partners involved.
Yes, we agree about the benefits of making the anonymized raw data from such surveys available to everyone. As it has been noted in the Q&A on Meta since July, this will be done for this survey as it was done for its two predecessors (see http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/surveys/ - would love to see more such datasets from other surveys in the movement, btw, and more people using them to do their own analyses).
Regarding the "real world": Of course in a strict interpretation, everything written somewhere has real-world impact, even if it is just to change the color of a few pixels on a screen ;) And surely we hope that the results of the survey will be useful to many people. But I think that part of what Sue meant there is that while in the past some organizations in the Wikimedia movement have been conducting surveys or other research projects whose primary purpose was to serve as input for specific important ongoing debates/decision processes, this present survey is not one of them. The prime example of such a debate/decision process would be the fundraising debates from summer 2011 to this spring (cf. the list of pages at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:SuesFundingTemplate ), and the research reports or surveys committed in this context, like WMF's "Survey of how money should be spent" or WMDE's "Spendwerk report". Personally, I was mostly not involved in that process, but I have a feeling that it is still on the minds of many chapter functionaries. So it seems to me that it was worthwhile to point out that the present survey is not intended as input for a concrete upcoming funding decision, for example, and perhaps Sue's remark has already become clearer in recent weeks since the last post in this thread.
On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Frédéric Schütz [email protected] wrote:
On 14/09/12 18:08, Jan-bart de Vreede wrote:
- Doesn't every survey contain questions that don't apply to the whole
responding audience?
No, because the answer would not be terribly useful. In all surveys I have seen in my work life [statistics work -- I don't design much surveys myself, but reply to a lot of them from different horizons :-], this does never happen.
On the contrary. One doesn't have to look far for such an example - in fact the Pew survey which I cited in an earlier discussions (regarding the notion that there is some kind of rule saying that survey respondents must not be asked about their opinion about actors in faraway countries which they may or may not be informed about) will do for this as well: http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/chapter-5-rating-world-leaders/ - for example, they asked a question that did not apply to 73% of the respondents in India. (Or perhaps you meant something else, but then I don't understand how it would apply to the present question in the editor survey.)
Typically, the filtering for a question about chapters would be something like this (simplified and written quickly):
- Do you know any organization active within the Wikimedia movement ?
(free text fields allow people to enter names)
Nice idea, but free-form text fields are notoriously hard to parse exactly. (You would either need to program something that e.g. maps "WMCH", "Wikimedia Suisse", "Wikimedia Svizzera", "Das Schweizer Chapter", "Die Wikimedia-Ländervereinigung in der Schweiz" all to the same entity, or code thousands of such replies manually.)
- This page contain a list of organizations active within the Wikimedia
movement; please tick all the ones you know (even if you have only heard the name)
(a list follows, with maybe "WMF", "Local chapters in general", and a list of individual chapters)
Yes, that should be feasible; could be an idea for a future survey.
- People are then asked to rate and/or comment each entity that was
mentioned under (1) or (2).
This way, not only do we avoid having people give their opinion on a topic they've never heard about, but we also get two different levels of knowledge on the topic (either the user knew it well enough to list the name, or he had to be reminded).
But regarding "Local chapters in general" or the contested question, we already avoid this by offering the "don't know" option. Unless one assumes that a significant number of respondents is lying about their knowledge when they enter a rating instead of using that option. But if someone really wants to go that far, they could also just tick an "I know this organization" checkbox even though they never heard of it.
2012/8/21 Delphine Ménard [email protected]:
If, however, we're going to mix editor's experience and satisfaction about Wikimedia, I am cruelly missing any kind of feedback question about the work of the chapters and/or other organisations or groups in the Wikimedia Universe that would give people the right scope about what is happening in a more "offline" kind of way. Of course, we could do a separate survey for chapters, but if we're truly an international movement, then all Wikimedia entities that support/interact with the community probably would benefit from being put in the same bag in order to fine tune their support and help for the Wikimedia communities.
+1.
Cristian
Le 22 août 2012 à 13:11, Cristian Consonni [email protected] a écrit :
2012/8/21 Delphine Ménard [email protected]:
If, however, we're going to mix editor's experience and satisfaction about Wikimedia, I am cruelly missing any kind of feedback question about the work of the chapters and/or other organisations or groups in the Wikimedia Universe that would give people the right scope about what is happening in a more "offline" kind of way. Of course, we could do a separate survey for chapters, but if we're truly an international movement, then all Wikimedia entities that support/interact with the community probably would benefit from being put in the same bag in order to fine tune their support and help for the Wikimedia communities.
+1.
+1 and I emphasize the "Wikimedia Communities" because according to the survey it seems that the Foundation is still believing that there is only one and unique community!
charles
___________________________________________________________ Charles ANDRES, Chairman "Wikimedia CH" – Association for the advancement of free knowledge – www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch