Research talk:FAQ
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
Is approval required?[edit]
Is there anything here which implies that Research Committee approval is required for asking questions of those who have agreed to accept emails? James Salsman 02:35, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
- James, RCom approval on subject recruitment was precisely introduced to review who runs surveys and what for, to make sure that every project is fully documented and reviewed, to avoid the risk that editors may send personal information to scammers pretending to be legitimate researchers, to review the data retention/data sharing policy of who collects this data and finally to put a brake on recruitment burnout for community members. I appreciate that it may not be clear that a review/approval is needed, but that's the standard process that has been introduced since the creation of the RCom, which supersedes the previous attempts at regulating subject recruitment. We're trying to work closely with the community and the Foundation to make sure that all researchers or community members interested in recruiting participants are redirected to this page. --DarTar 22:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
- Would you please answer the yes/no question that I asked above? I note that if you click through to Research:Subject recruitment, the "Requirements" section says, "Projects supported by the Wikimedia Research Committee for subject recruitment are expected to meet the following requirements." That second linked page says nothing about mandatory committee approval; in fact, the last line of the table makes it clear that Foundation support is not required to conduct research. It does say, "the Foundation is currently designing policies," without any links to even a draft. The email that I sent stated clearly that I was administering the inactive admins survey as a volunteer. I did not request Foundation assistance after I decided to go ahead after 2.5+ years of delay from the time that the survey had been approved. I asked only for a point of contact to send the data. That point of contact was explicitly specified during an open Office Hours forum. Moreover, the Foundation's privacy policy explicitly excludes email and data collected by non-Foundation personell. There are very serious ethics problems in trying to suppress research by misrepresenting policy. James Salsman 23:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
- That's correct, it's not sufficiently clear that this is a policy that we're enforcing and not just a service we provide, but the answer is yes: approval is required. As you may have realized SR-related discussions are everywhere on Meta and it's hard to point all researchers to this page, we're working on that: we usually catch all attempts at recruiting participants without a review in a timely way, but sometime we miss them. So it's ok, we don't blame anyone for not being able to find out this documentation and comply with this procedure. But once you are told that this is the procedure to follow, we expect you to comply with it if you want to go ahead with your research. Nobody is misrepresenting policy: any data collected by third parties (which includes an editor like you) does not fall under Wikimedia's privacy policy, that's precisely the reason why we've introduced a stricter review process to avoid potential misuse of data collected from our volunteers. --DarTar 00:10, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
- Where is it stated that approval is required? James Salsman 02:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
- That's correct, it's not sufficiently clear that this is a policy that we're enforcing and not just a service we provide, but the answer is yes: approval is required. As you may have realized SR-related discussions are everywhere on Meta and it's hard to point all researchers to this page, we're working on that: we usually catch all attempts at recruiting participants without a review in a timely way, but sometime we miss them. So it's ok, we don't blame anyone for not being able to find out this documentation and comply with this procedure. But once you are told that this is the procedure to follow, we expect you to comply with it if you want to go ahead with your research. Nobody is misrepresenting policy: any data collected by third parties (which includes an editor like you) does not fall under Wikimedia's privacy policy, that's precisely the reason why we've introduced a stricter review process to avoid potential misuse of data collected from our volunteers. --DarTar 00:10, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
- Would you please answer the yes/no question that I asked above? I note that if you click through to Research:Subject recruitment, the "Requirements" section says, "Projects supported by the Wikimedia Research Committee for subject recruitment are expected to meet the following requirements." That second linked page says nothing about mandatory committee approval; in fact, the last line of the table makes it clear that Foundation support is not required to conduct research. It does say, "the Foundation is currently designing policies," without any links to even a draft. The email that I sent stated clearly that I was administering the inactive admins survey as a volunteer. I did not request Foundation assistance after I decided to go ahead after 2.5+ years of delay from the time that the survey had been approved. I asked only for a point of contact to send the data. That point of contact was explicitly specified during an open Office Hours forum. Moreover, the Foundation's privacy policy explicitly excludes email and data collected by non-Foundation personell. There are very serious ethics problems in trying to suppress research by misrepresenting policy. James Salsman 23:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
