Talk:VisualEditor/Survey 2015

privacy policies
Hi, there are references to our own privacy policies and those from Qualtrics and it is not really clear when and how the one or the other is relevant. Could that be clarified before the survey is published? Lyzzy (talk) 12:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I understand that both are relevant if you take the survey at the Qualtrics website, and only the WMF privacy policy is relevant if never visit the Qualtrics website. If you have a more detailed question, I can ask someone from the Legal team to look in.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Pinky sl
--Pinky sl (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) First, to which project do you contribute most often?
 * 2) *Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons
 * 3) How frequently do you use VisualEditor when you are editing articles?
 * 4) *Almost every day
 * 5) How likely are you to recommend VisualEditor to a new editor?
 * 6) *Most likely ... I like VE
 * 7) Choose all that apply:
 * 8) * I sometimes start editing in VisualEditor, but then switch to the wikitext editor.
 * 9) In VisualEditor, the area that needs the most improvement is...
 * 10) * Support for languages other than English
 * 11) * Adding or editing templates
 * 12) * Having discussions with other editors
 * 13) * Switching back and forth between VisualEditor and wikitext editor
 * 14) * Showing me diffs and the history of articles visually
 * 15) I would like to see improvements to this area (the one selected in the previous question).  If I could make one change to this area, I would change...
 * 16) * I would change... editing templates. I miss linking tool inside template dialog ... it is pain in the ass using by hand.
 * 17) * And I would love to see »« to work like Formatting tool - first select some text and then »«. In Slovenian Wikipedia we use guillemets pointing inwards (»like this«) to indicate speech, etc and not "like this". It is hard to find them on keyboard, so you have to use symbols via Special character insertion.
 * 18) How did you hear about this survey?
 * 19) * A message on my user talk page
 * You're the first on this page, Pinky sl! Thank you so much for taking the time to let us know what you think. Regards, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * No problem, I recently give some lectures about VE to senior citizens, and sometimes it is double work to teach them how to use VE and on the other hand explain them what do they see in diffs and history. --Pinky sl (talk) 15:54, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Unsolicited e-mail
I was just sent an e-mail linking to this page and to the survey page on Qualtrics; the problem that I have with this is that I have never expressed any permission to use my e-mail address for such purposes. It seems that the reason I was contacted is because I had filled, or commented on, a bug related to VisualEditor on Bugzilla or Phabricator. However, my contributing to those websites by no means equals permission to be contacted about surveys like this one; indeed, in no place does Phabricator (or did Bugzilla) mention that filling bugs or posting comments means that I can be contacted by e-mail to fill in surveys related to software that activity was related to.

The fact that the survey e-mail was unsolicited by me, and that it appears to have been sent in bulk classifies it--according to Wikipedia--as nothing else than spam. That said, I would like to understand who and why made the decision to contact people by e-mail without their express permission and who and why made the decision to harvest e-mail addresses left on Bugzilla or Phabricator to do that. I think it reflects very poorly on the organizers of the survey that they have to resolve to sending spam to ask for people's input on VisualEditor. I also think that we should agree for the future that the Foundation as a whole--and not just organizers of this survey--will not contact people on e-mail asking to fill surveys unless they specifically opted-in to receiving such e-mails. Thank you, odder (talk) 20:44, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * "If you choose to provide your email address, we will keep it confidential, except as provided in this Policy.
 * We may occasionally send you emails about important information.
 * You may choose to opt out of certain kinds of notifications."


 * From Wikimedia's Privacy Policy. Linked from the bottom of MW.org, Wikipedia.org, WMF.org, Bugzilla, and Fabricator. Ckoerner (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see how this survey is important as compared to a million different issues I was not e-mailed about, and anyway, I wasn't given the change to opt-out of this kind of notification, even though it had been promised by the policy. odder (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I suppose that "importance" is a subjective criteria, but as this relates to the WMF's #1 engineering and product goal for this quarter, I think that this might reasonably fall within that subjective standard. However, I disagree with your claim that you never agreed to being contacted in e-mail:  I sent e-mail only to people who filed bugs or commented on bugs about VisualEditor in Bugzilla.  When you created your account at Bugzilla, you explicitly (as a condition of participating there) opted in to being contacted via e-mail by any registered user "for more information" related to anything that you posted there.  This request for more information about how you would prioritize the problems you commented on fits easily within that loose framework.
 * Additionally, you were given the chance to opt-out of this specific kind of notification at the first possible opportunity, namely in the message itself. The message also said that this is the only time that I expect to contact Bugzilla contributors via e-mail, so opting out, although possible, is probably also pointless.  (You may still reply to that e-mail if you want to do that.)
 * Finally, as to why I e-mailed people who had contributed to bugs in Bugzilla, the answer is: because there is no other way to reach those people.  One of Bugzilla's failings was publishing email addresses but not recording on-wiki usernames.  With Phabricator's use of OAuth, this problem of having e-mail addresses but not Wiki(m)(p)edia usernames may not be such a significant problem in the future (although it will continue to be a problem for people who report bugs here but aren't contributors to other WMF sites).  However, for right now, we have to use the contact methods that people provided when they created their Bugzilla accounts.
 * (In case anyone's curious, yes, the Legal team did approve contacting these people via e-mail in advance. I'm not entirely sure that the number of e-mail addresses included was high enough to actually qualify as "bulk" e-mail, though.  I could have sent that message several times over without triggering any limits.)  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 19 March 2015 (UTC)