Cyber Anthropology

The Australian Government publishes a paper on Cyber Crime: Crime risks of three-dimensional virtual environments

Fastweb reveals that Google Chrome won the browser wars for February.

AP Reports (via Google News) are ruling by German high court: Telecom data cannot be retained

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I was talking in #fedora-mktg with Mel Chua today about my dilemma of finding a count of currently active Fedora Project contributors. So she whipped up a twill script in python to get a count on contributions based on FAS authenticated activity.

So here is a challenge to you other hackers, can you find a way to do this better? And, can you do it by Friday?

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Fedora

During this next part of my research process I will be posting a survey available to all Fedora contributors. Luckily, this part of the participation process requires no signatures! So, those of you who were unable to participate in the interview process* will be able to easily participate in the survey portion as it is completely electronic.

The long and short of surveys is the quantitative statistical analysis that can be performed on them. The purpose of my survey is to help triangulate the data obtained during the qualitative (interview/participant observation) portion of my research against a broader sample that is more representative of the overall community. However, in order to do this properly I need to know how big the current overall community is.

This is where I need your help. I need you, Fedora Project contributors, to help me find ways to get at least an approximate count of currently active and contributing participants that can be verified by some means.  This could be getting the number for how many people own packages in Rawhide or even how many people have edited the wiki in the past 6 months. Being that not everyone owns packages or edits the Wiki, we need ways to count the other contributors as well. Also, there is likely some overlap between several countable contributing groups so we need to keep issues like that under consideration. I understand that it will be difficult to come up with an exact number, so a close approximation will suffice as long as we have ways to support how we got the numbers and they are verifiable.

Not only will we need to ways to get the numbers, but also the people who are able to access that data and get it to me. So, if you come up with an idea but have no knowledge of how to actually get the data in question, feel free to brainstorm on this post with other people! I imagine that by working together we can quickly and easily come up with ways to figure this out. I’ll be hanging out in IRC as always, so feel free to ping me there or email me if you have ideas, questions, or numbers you wish to donate to the cause.

Once we have a number, then I can come up with a quota and will be able to release the survey!

I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for helping me out with this process.

*If you still want to participate in the interview process and have the ability to return your signature to me electronically (print/scan, fax, xournal, signing with a mouse) then please contact me diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.

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Fedora, surveys

Today’s post brought to you by international privacy and the digital divide:

Fast Company reports: Google Execs are found guilty by an Italian court for privacy violations.

LA Times reports: China will require individuals seeking to establish personal websites to verify their identities with regulators and have their photographs taken.

FCC Reports: 93 Million Americans Disconnected From Broadband Opportunities. (PDF found here) Here is an additional press release on broadband.gov.

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China, privacy

Research design in anthropology is a tricky thing. It is the part of the process you do before you do anything else, and thus you do before you have any real sense of the situation in which you will be researching and the people with which you will be working. It is the place where you lay down the questions to be answered, setup ways in which you will attempt to answer them, try and anticipate all of the ins and outs of the process as well as all the steps necessary to be taken with all of the stakeholders, which in my case includes my client, my masters committee, and my university IRB.

Then you get into the project and start your research, and only then do you start to realize and understand what you’ve got yourself into and just how many things you didn’t anticipate. So far with this project, being a cyber anthropological based research study (all of the research is being conducted online), my problems have all centered around technology.

My first limitation was understanding the process to get my blog on the Fedora Planet blogroll. With help and some ‘hacking the system’ I got on and while at FUDcon I figured out why it didn’t work in the first place (I wasn’t a part of enough groups!).

Now I am realizing my second limitation, that of requiring a signed piece of paper from all interview participants before each interview can commence. Pen and paper is perhaps one of the oldest forms of communication and technology known to man and yet it is the one thing standing between me an several potential interviews.

This was not a hindrance I anticipated when designing my research study, and it is perhaps not something with which people who are not researching under a university have to deal. However, it is something I now realize is important and am bringing attention to in case there are others embarking on similar research studies with similar IRB limitations that require them to have signed consent forms so they can account for this process in their research design.

Were I to design a similar project in the future under the same IRB limitations, I would ask my IRB to approve an electronic encrypted signature on my consent forms.

Here’s to hoping someone out there can learn from my mistakes!

That all being said, if you have a means for returning a signed document to me electronically and you would like to be interviewed for the Fedora research project, but have yet to contact me please do so soon! All interviews will be wrapped up (as best they can) by Friday!

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Fedora, irb, research

If you would like to participate in the interview portion of the Fedora research project I am current conducting, please visit my informational post on it here!

I need at least 10 more willing participants by the end of next week. The most convenient way of participating for all involved so far has been through email. So if you have a little time and wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about your participation in Fedora via email, please let me know!

If you need alternative means of signing the informed consent documents, please note that you can sign it via a tablet as well as via fax (just email me for the fax number), rather than being restricted to having scan your forms in and send them to me.

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Fedora, research

An amusing look at the influx and seemingly sudden popularity of digital scholarship [Youtube Video] in academia as well as the rise of open courseware as an alternative means of education, by CriticalCommons.org.

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critical commons, cyber anthropology

After some great suggestions provided by a couple of people on alternative FLOSS tools for conducting interviews online, I thought I would ask the community if there were any preferred web based FLOSS survey tools available?

I’ll be constructing a survey based on the interview results by the middle of February. So, I would like to get started on the construction of it as soon as possible. If you know of any, and especially if you have used any please let me know.

I look forward to your suggestions!

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Fedora

I hope you all are enjoying the new year. I had so much fun at FUDcon getting to know as many people as I could and participating in your wonderful Barcamp and Hackfest. You were all very welcoming and showed much welcome interest in my research project.

Now, it’s time to start ramping up my research again as the spring semester gets into full swing. I’ve prepared a short FAQ to refresh your memories, and/or introduce myself to those who haven’t heard of the project before.

I’m looking for research contributors!

I am looking for people who would like to participate in the study by being interviewed. These interviews will take place over IRC [Freenode]/email/IM/Skype/Phone/Video Chat or even face-to-face if you are local to the DFW Texas area!

All you need to do to qualify is be a Fedora contributor. I am looking for interviews from everyone including but not limited to: developers, ambassadors, designers, QA people, documentation people, and sys admins. This list also includes those who work directly for Red Hat.

The interview process will take at least 1 hour depending on how fast you type, and could potentially last longer.

Here is my informed consent notice:

Informed Consent Notice

The purpose of this research study is to learn more about the development of open source software in an online environment by asking about your experiences and opinions related to working within the Fedora Project community. You are being asked to participate in an online interview that will take about 1 hour of your time. Answering the questions in the interview involves no foreseeable risks. While there are not likely to be direct benefits to you for your participation, it is expected that the results of this study will assist my client, Red Hat/Fedora by helping to reduce turnover and provide ways to better accommodate current community participants as well as identifying ways to attract new talent to the project. Participation is voluntary and you may stop at any time without penalty. By answering the interview questions you are giving consent to participate and confirming that you are at least 18 years old.  Results of the interview will be reported only on a group basis.

If you have any questions regarding this study, please contact master’s in applied anthropology candidate, Diana Harrelson Martin, at diana [@] cyber-anthro.com / 214-405-5355, or Dr. Christina Wasson, Department of Anthropology at (940) 565-2752. This project has been reviewed and approved by the University of North Texas Institutional Review Board (IRB).  You may contact the IRB at (940) 565-3940 with any questions about the rights of research subjects.  You may print this Notice for your records.

You can find the actual IRB stamped form here.

For all those wishing to participate, you will also need to download the informed consent form, sign it, scan it back in, and send it back to me before we can even schedule an interview. You can find that form here. Please review it and ask me any questions you may have!

I know not everyone reads the list, so please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think may be interested in participating. I will also be posting to various Fedora mailing lists and my Fedora wiki page about this opportunity. If you can think of any place else this should be posted, pelase let me know!

For those under 18:
If you wish to participate, I will need you to not contact me directly. Instead, I need you to direct your parents to this page and have them follow the directions there to enable you to participate. They may also be receiving communication from Red Hat to do the same.

For everyone else:
If you are over 18 and would like to contact me directly about participating, please email me at diana [@] cyber-anthro.com or find me on IRC under the nick anthro-diana!

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Fedora