[vox] Survey question - self-harvesting our lists for someone else?

[Marc Elliot Hall]

Bill Kendrick wrote:

> So LUGOD has been asked if we could help conduct a survey on Open Source for
> a local university (no, not UC Davis :) ).

<snippage>

> Before we actually go ahead with this, I wanted to see what people's feelings were
> on this.  I had considered a pre-#1 step where we'd post a message to the list
> in question and say "Hey, people subscribed will be randomly-selected to maybe take
> part in some survey.  Let us know if you wish to opt-out."

I hate to take a cavalier attitude about people's privacy; but it seems 
to me that given the precautions you've outlined, nobody can 
legitimately complain after being given a couple of weeks to opt-out of 
the survey pool. This is a mailing list, after all, to which basically 
anyone can subscribe and contribute on-topic posts. Open Source research 
is de facto on-topic.

> Would even this be sufficient?  Are we setting ourselves up for a bad precident?

On the other hand, you may want to set up some way for mailing list 
subscribers to express their preferences about participating in 
"official" research projects so that in the future this is a non-issue.

> What are peoples thoughts on this?  Would the fact that the survey is being
> conducted by academia, and the fact that LUGOD would be the 'vessel' for the e-mails,
> be sufficient to keep from pissing people off?

Finally, as Rod pointed out, publicizing the LUGOD privacy policy would 
be a good idea.

> Your thoughts are welcome...  thank you!
> 
> -bill!
> root@lugod.org
> 
> PS - I'm not sure what the time-line is for all this, either.  The process of getting
> this survey to the point it is now seems to have taken months and months, so I doubt
> we'll be asked to start randomly e-mailing anyone any time soon.

-- 
Marc Elliot Hall		www.hallmarc.net/quick_resume.html
P.O. Box 435
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