[WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: A survey about Wikipedia

Sat May 28 08:03:23 UTC 2005

On 5/27/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
> prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully exploiting
> the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information about this survey
> published on our mailing list. All we're told is that this is part of a
> "non-commercial cross-cultural research project" and we're supposed to go
> to a non-secure http site registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm
> aware, part of Israel) to fill it in.
> I wouldn't respond to a chap with a clipboard in the street who told me
> this.  I'd laugh in his face.
> Who is he?  Why won't Haifa university's servers do?

If you are insinuating that somehow my goodwill (didn't know I had
any) has been exploited by someone in order to forward the survey
request to the mailing list, you are mistaken. The invitation to take
part in the survey has been on the Village Pump for at least 10 days,
and nobody has made any objection there about the presence of the
invitation. The invitation to the survey can be found at the following
URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VP#Wikipedians_On-line_Questionnaire

Furthermore, the request to forward the information to the mailing
list was sent to me (I presume) as a result of my role as mailing list
administrator. In that situation, it is not my place to decide if the
email should go to the mailing list, so long as the email is not spam
and actually relates to Wikipedia. Whether people choose to
participate in the survey is their own personal choice.

Personally, I feel that fresh data about Wikipedia users will be a good thing

~Mark Ryan