Avi gan

Hello, please feel free to leave a message for me here. --Avi gan (talk) 00:40, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

RE: Study

Hello! I noticed on the study that it asks if you would give up editing on Wikipedia for a month. Let's say I put in 50$+ and get chosen, would I stop editing after being chosen or do you stop editing and might get chosen at the end? Good luck with it! Kb03 (talk) 02:14, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi, if you are randomly chosen among the folks who respond and we selected the $50 row, then we will message you and then your 1 month period starts then. You will get paid at the end of the period. Does that make sense? --Avi gan (talk) 02:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks for clarifying. I'll sign up, it'll be interesting. Good luck with the study, I'd love to see the results when it's done. Kb03 (talk) 02:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! We will post the results on the meta-wiki page of the project here.

Random selection is all well and good, but are you aware that many if not most of the people you're inviting are brand-new accounts who have made only a handful of edits to Wikipedia, including someone who's only ever made one edit, someone who averages only one edit every two years and an outright vandalism-only account? I'm not sure what advice the WMF have given you, but taking this approach isn't likely to give you a representative sample of the Wikipedia editor base. Incidentally, what's to stop your participants just abandoning their account for a month, claiming the cash, and continuing to edit logged-out or with an alternative account? ‑ Iridescent 20:14, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching out and raising those points. They are well taken and we had discussed them as well. One way how we will account for this is that we will take into account editors’ level of involvement in the analyses. We will also sample more from the group of highly active editors in order to get a clear picture of their valuations. We will explain those details of the analyses on the project meta page once the data collection is completed. Thanks again!--Avi gan (talk) 20:56, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Your Study

Hi Avi gan, I noticed you wanted to conduct a study on the economic worth of wikipedia. I would prefer to answer your survey if it was inside wikipedia. With so many hacking and I am unfamiliar with the link provided by you, I won't go there. Looks like you haven't spend much time creating or editing any wikipedia articles. You should try doing it for 8 hours per day. Good articles, in my opinion should take about 20 hours or more. Assessments also takes time. Poor articles can take 5 minutes using cut and paste methods. Thanks, SWP13 (talk) 06:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. The survey is hosted on our university (MIT) Qualtrics account. I am not sure if it is possible to host a survey within Wikipedia. Even the Wikipedia editor survey run by the Wikimedia foundation is hosted on Qualtrics (see here).--Avi gan (talk) 06:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

US-based

It's too bad that to participate in the study a respondent must be based in the US. The US-based requirement is ironic given that Wikipedia is an international organization. I provided a couple of false answers at the beginning of the survey only so that I can see what the survey looks like, but I quit before the end. I trust that does not mess up your study. -- Roger Hui (talk) 15:30, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I am really sorry about that, we wanted to do a study on the entire international community but because we are giving monetary incentives for participating, our universities have a rule that we can only use our grant money to reward US based participants (I am guessing for tax reasons). --Avi gan (talk) 15:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't care about the reward; I just wanted to see what the study looked like. Also contribute to the study in case it's helpful. Peace. -- Roger Hui (talk) 18:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

December 2018

Your survey may or may not be a good idea, but spamming literally hundreds of user talk pages isn't. Please don't continue to promote your work in this way. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 16:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

JamesBWatson, this is a common practice for recruiting participants in research studies on Wikipedia. The researchers have limited their recruitment to only 30 people per day to limit the wave of invitations. Please see WP:NOTLAB for a discussion of best practices. As far as I can tell, these researchers have applied the best practices and have had several discussions about their recruiting work. Please see m:Research:How much do Wikipedians in the US value editing Wikipedia? for details about their study and please also see the associated talk page for discussions about their recruiting practices. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 19:13, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I fail to see how spamming n people over a period of days is any better than doing them all in one go. If this is a common practice, we should put a stop to it forthwith like any spam. WP:NOTLAB says "research projects that are disruptive to the community" are not allowed, and getting spam on my talk page is certainly disruptive. Pinkbeast (talk) 04:34, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Pinkbeast. Doing it over a course of time is no better than doing it in one go, and the fact that something is "a common practice" doesn't justify it: vandalising articles is also common, in fact far more common. Avi gan, you have not answered my message here, but you are continuing doing the talk page spamming. Can you please explain why you think it is acceptable? The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I have received numerous thanks from editors for reverting your spam on their talk pages, and I have also been thanked for my edits to this talk page, so it is not just me and Pinkbeast who don't think its acceptable. Also, if EpochFail is right in thinking that spamming hundreds of talk pages to get participants for one's project is common practice then I wonder why I have never seen it before in all my years here. I have, on the other hand, seen editors blocked for a mere few dozen spam posts to user talk pages. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@JamesBWatson, Pinkbeast, and EpochFail: While there has been talk page discussion over this particular study before now, I don't think there was ever discussion over a mass mailing. Theoretically, something very general just looking for responses from random editors should either be posted on a major noticeboard or at most a watchlist notice. If there actually is consensus to send out a mass mailing, procedure should be followed and it should be done via WP:MMS by an experienced editor. As it stands right now, the actions taken almost certainly violate the bot policy since they look to be semi-automated mass edits without consensus. Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:51, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@JamesBWatson, Pinkbeast, and Nathan2055: The authors of the study made a posting on the village pump to announce their intentions to run the study. In response, several Wikipedians raised concerns and made suggestions on their Meta page. Once those conversations had concluded, I advised the researchers to proceed with their recruitment. I usually recommend that researchers post their recruitment messages on talk pages so that their activities can easily be monitored using Special:Recentchanges. The email user functionality is much harder for the rest of Wikipedia to track. I also generally recommend that they post a few invitations at a time so that minimal damage is done if concerns are raised after the initial round of invitations have been posted.

I understand that this may be your first experience with external researchers on Wikipedia. It's my primary volunteer work to support such external researchers and I have been doing so since 2011. The goal in my work is to find a balance. Research of Wikipedia has produced important insights that help Wikipedia function. I wrote up a summary of the types of insights we gain from researchers for Wikipedia:Research 8 years ago. However, researchers can (often inadvertently) be disruptive to the work we are doing here. So I work with researchers to make sure their studies are well documented on-wiki and to make sure that they know how to engage in conversations on the village pumps and other relevant forums before starting any interventions. That way, Wikipedians have the opportunity to raise concerns and make suggestions for the least disruptive way to proceed. My recommendations and practice in supporting researchers to not disrupt Wikipedia were a large part of the inspiration for what remains in WP:NOTLAB (the original policy proposal was much more comprehensive and went through years of almost being policy).

With that said, it seems you have raised concerns that were *not* raised during the initial posting on the village pump. I've reached out to Avi gan to suggest that he stop sending recruitment messages while this conversation develops. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 20:25, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I have been watching this study unfold since the original Village Pump posting. I would suggest moving this back there so that it can again be talked about by the wider community. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:38, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

The original village pump proposal makes no mention of the talk page spam. The Meta page does, but not particularly prominently.

Bluntly, I don't see how you can speak of your "recommendations and practice in supporting researchers to not disrupt Wikipedia" when in fact it appears you have recommended that researchers do disrupt Wikipedia by posting spam. Pinkbeast (talk) 02:41, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all the discussion and comments. I will stop posting further invites and make a post again the village pump to solicit better ways of reaching out to potential subjects.Avi gan (talk) 02:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)