We understand that as a member of multiple lists some OSM contributors may have received the survey invitation more than once and that may have felt like a disrespectful attempt to impose on one's personal time and inbox space. That was definitely not our intent and although we tried to be judicious in our use of national mailing lists (where we only posted in about 10% of the lists), it is difficult to completely avoid duplicate invites to some members. Simply posting the message on talk pages without having it mailed to members seems not to be an available option in the current OSM list setup.
The research we are pursuing is, we believe, of interest and its insights helpful to the OSM community in terms of understanding several issues that can help its organizational functioning and mission accomplishment (they address member perceptions, behavior, and profile). Numerous OSM members have been extremely supportive of our work and virtually all of the survey takers show an interest in learning about the findings at the conclusion of the research, a fact that suggests there is value in this research.
The research we are pursuing is, we believe, of interest and its insights helpful to the OSM community in terms of understanding several issues that can help its organizational functioning and mission accomplishment (they address member perceptions, behavior, and profile). Numerous OSM members have been extremely supportive of our work and virtually all of the survey takers show an interest in learning about the findings at the conclusion of the research, a fact that suggests there is value in this research.
Yet in order to obtain statistically meaningful results, a certain number of responses is required and we have frankly not reached it yet (hence the renewed request for participation in some national lists). Rather than resigning ourselves to the thought that voluntary participation is impossible to induce (which would largely suggest academic research to be a futile endeavor), we choose to believe that, given the opportunity, enough people will see the value of such research and sacrifice some personal time for the greater good (a behavior that we believe is not foreign to the OSM contributor base). However, to reduce the irritation that apparently these invite messages can produce, we have limited the number of lists approached and will close the survey as planned at the end of August, regardless of the number of responses we will have received.
There are clearly things that could be improved about this work – we agree, for example, that offering the survey in multiple languages would help obtain more globally representative samples and insights. Yet in most academic research the tradeoff between ideal methodology and resource limitations is a salient concern, and that is definitely the case here.
Finally, it is even the exchanges noted on the talk pages and the [limited] negative feedback we have received that help us learn about how the community works internally and interacts with the “outside world” – we are thankful for all the interested members’ feedback. To the others, we apologize (again).
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