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> The problem here is really that they’re wasting time of the maintainers without their approval. Not only that, but they are also doing experiments on a commu

by jnxx 6y ago

> The problem here is really that they’re wasting time of the maintainers without their approval. Not only that, but they are also doing experiments on a community of people which is against their interest and also could be harmful by creating mistrust. Trust is a big issue, without it it is almost impossible for people to work meaningfully together.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
Yeah this actually seems more like sociological research except since it’s in the comp sci department the investigators don’t seem to be trained in acceptable (and legal) standards of conducting such research on human subjects. You definitely need prior consent when doing this sort of thing. Ideally this would be escalated to a research ethics committee at UMN because these researchers need to be trained in acceptable practices when dealing with human subjects. So to me it makes sense the subjects “opted out” and escalated to the university.
- DistressedDrone 6y ago
  Already cited in another comment: > We send the emails to the Linux communityand seek their feedback. The experiment is not to blame any maintainers but to reveal issues in the process. The IRB of University of Minnesota reviewed the procedures of the experiment and determined that this is not human research. We obtained a formal IRB-exempt letter. The experiment will not collect any personal data, individual behaviors, or personal opinions. It is limited to studying the patching process OSS communities follow, instead of individuals. So they did think of that. Either they misconstrued their research or the IRB messed up. Either way, they can now see for themselves exactly how human a pissed off maintainer is.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    how is this not experimentation on humans? "can we trick this human" is the entire experiment.
aflag 6y ago
Besides that, if their "research" patch gets into a release, it could potentially put thousands or millions of users at risk.

by jnxx 6y ago

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago

Yeah this actually seems more like sociological research except since it’s in the comp sci department the investigators don’t seem to be trained in acceptable (and legal) standards of conducting such research on human subjects. You definitely need prior consent when doing this sort of thing. Ideally this would be escalated to a research ethics committee at UMN because these researchers need to be trained in acceptable practices when dealing with human subjects. So to me it makes sense the subjects “opted out” and escalated to the university.

DistressedDrone 6y ago
Already cited in another comment: > We send the emails to the Linux communityand seek their feedback. The experiment is not to blame any maintainers but to reveal issues in the process. The IRB of University of Minnesota reviewed the procedures of the experiment and determined that this is not human research. We obtained a formal IRB-exempt letter. The experiment will not collect any personal data, individual behaviors, or personal opinions. It is limited to studying the patching process OSS communities follow, instead of individuals. So they did think of that. Either they misconstrued their research or the IRB messed up. Either way, they can now see for themselves exactly how human a pissed off maintainer is.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bagacrap 6y ago
  how is this not experimentation on humans? "can we trick this human" is the entire experiment.

aflag 6y ago

Besides that, if their "research" patch gets into a release, it could potentially put thousands or millions of users at risk.