LimeSurvey

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
A LimeSurvey in action for the Wikimania 2021's call for volunteers.

LimeSurvey is a free software useful to create forms or surveys, from simple to sophisticated ones.

The Legal Team of Wikimedia Foundation in 2022 recommended against using Google Forms.[citation needed] Wikimedia Foundation has a LimeSurvey instance available to staff members.[1]

Features

Some key features of LimeSurvey:

  • full data ownership
  • support to encrypt answers at database level (e.g. to encrypt name, surname, email, etc.)
  • ability to translate questions in multiple languages[2]
  • support for different question types[3]
  • support for custom configurations and dependencies between questions
  • backup and restore
  • ability to export answers in multiple open formats (to process them with your favorite tools)[4]
  • ability to edit an already-started survey without losing answers (but please design a good questionnaire from the beginning)[5]
  • e-mail notifications (to monitor survey adoption)

Quick start guide

For details about how to use LimeSurvey, see the official quick start guide.

The guide is available in multiple languages. You can contribute to translations in CC BY-SA.

Note: the part about "Create an account" is not relevant to staff members. If you are a staff member, see the page "Surveys" on internal officewiki for access.

Quick start guide

The official URL of the Wikimedia Foundation LimeSurvey is: https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/

Providers

There are numerous LimeSurvey hosting providers.

Manager Provider Type Domain Tracking Volunteers can add survey
Wikimedia IT Wikimedia IT self-hosted wikimedia.it No Yes: contact WMIT Info Surveys in WMIT
Wikimedia CH Wikimedia CH self-hosted wikimedia.ch No No; try contacting WMCH
Wikimedia Foundation LimeSurvey GmbH as a service limesurvey.net No No; try contacting WMF[6]
Wikimedia Small Projects Wikimedia Small Projects self-hosted survey.wikisp.org No Yes: Fill a task in Phabricator Request on Phabricator
Wikimedia Argentina LimeSurvey GmbH as a service https://encuestas.wikimedia.org.ar/ No No; try contacting WMAR
Wikimedistas de Uruguay LimeSurvey GmbH as a service - No No; try contacting WDU
Wikimedia Colombia Wikimedia Colombia self-hosted https://wikimediacolombia.org/encuestas No No; try contacting WMCO
Wikimedistas del Perú Wikimedistas del Perú self-hosted https://survey.wikimedia.org.pe/ No No; try contacting WDP
Wikimedia Portugal Wikimedia Portugal self-hosted https://wikimedia.pt/lime/ No No; try contacting WMPT

Help

Here are some human beings who can help you with this tool:

Feel free to add yourself in this category to provide help!

Ethical values

Features apart, LimeSurvey can also be appreciated for some ethical values dear to Wikimedia projects (think about MediaWiki):

Client FLOSS Server FLOSS No third-parties Risk of data leak by mistake[7] Provided by WMF
LimeSurvey Yes[8][9] Yes[10] Yes[11] No[12] Yes [1]
Google Forms No[13][9] No[14] No[14] Yes[1] No
Qualtrics No[13][9] No[14] No[14] (please add this info) Yes

Note

  1. Translating LimeSurvey
  2. Question types in LimeSurvey
  3. Export responses in LimeSurvey
  4. How-to update or add questions to a live LimeSurvey
  5. At the moment, there is not a way to request setting up a community survey on https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/ but the Wikimedia Foundation Global Data and Insights team looks forward to exploring options to make this available in the future.
  6. Some solutions are designed to in no way allow the ability to show all survey data to the public.
  7. This solution works without proprietary JavaScript executed on your computer.
  8. a b c https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
  9. The server of this application is free software.
  10. This solution allows you to exclude any third party company.
  11. LimeSurvey has an option to show aggregate statistics; it does not support exposing specific responses in the open. This avoids many issues caused by human mistake.
  12. a b This solution requires some proprietary JavaScript to be executed on your computer or device.
  13. a b c d In this solution it is not possible to manage everything on your server (on-premise) or it is not possible to do it using only free software.