Image filter referendum/Results/en

The referendum ended 30 August 2011. No more votes will be accepted.
The results were announced on 3 September 2011.

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Image filter referendum
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Introduction

The election committee for the personal image filter plebiscite publishes and distributes this preliminary and interim report, and will publish a full report once final analysis is done. The data for this analysis was provided by Software in the Public Interest, a neutral and trusted third party, who held the secure keys for encryption and did not decrypt the results until the conclusion of the election. The totals shown here were certified by Michael Schultheiss, who serves as the treasurer of Software in the Public Interest.

The committee thanks Michael Schultheiss of SPI for his diligent and timely assistance, and Andrew Garrett of WMF for his technical assistance and expertise.

Results

There were 24,146 votes cast, making this the largest exercise of its type for the Wikimedia Foundation. Of those, 123 votes were struck by the committee, including three test votes by committee members, leaving 24,023 votes accepted. The votes that were struck were disallowed due to confirmed instances of either intentional or accidental double voting. The voting total does not include ballots automatically cancelled when users revisited their votes.

There were two sections to this ballot: the first a series of six statements asking that voters rate their level of agreement with the statement on a scale of 0–10 (10 means strong support), and the second a free text comment field. The two sections were analyzed separately and are discussed below.

Numerical results

For the first question:

Important to offer this feature.

It is important for the Wikimedia projects to offer this feature to readers.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
269	3763	790	1163	978	715	2819	1800	2670	2957	1308	4791	24023	23754	5.7	6
1.12 %	15.66 %	3.29 %	4.84 %	4.07 %	2.98 %	11.73 %	7.49 %	11.11 %	12.31 %	5.44 %	19.94 %

Logged in and logged out.

It is important that the feature be usable by both logged-in and logged-out readers.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
627	3394	630	852	715	572	2393	1115	1921	2682	1947	7175	24023	23396	6.4	8
2.61 %	14.13 %	2.62 %	3.55 %	2.98 %	2.38 %	9.96 %	4.64 %	8.00 %	11.16 %	8.10 %	29.87 %

User flags images.

It is important that individuals be able to report or flag images that they see as controversial, that have not yet been categorized as such.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
614	2809	617	829	684	697	2159	1790	2602	3405	2137	5680	24023	23409	6.4	7
2.56 %	11.69 %	2.57 %	3.45 %	2.85 %	2.90 %	8.99 %	7.45 %	10.83 %	14.17 %	8.90 %	23.64 %

Culturally neutral.

It is important that the feature be culturally neutral: as much as possible, it should aim to reflect a global or multicultural view of what imagery is potentially controversial.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
1399	2048	350	466	394	507	2134	895	1441	2271	2116	10002	24023	22624	7.4	9
5.82 %	8.53 %	1.46 %	1.94 %	1.64 %	2.11 %	8.88 %	3.73 %	6.00 %	9.45 %	8.81 %	41.64 %

Reversible.

It is important that hiding be reversible: readers should be supported if they decide to change their minds.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
471	548	40	63	61	70	433	253	551	1383	1812	18338	24023	23552	9.3	10
1.96 %	2.28 %	0.17 %	0.26 %	0.25 %	0.29 %	1.80 %	1.05 %	2.29 %	5.76 %	7.54 %	76.34 %

Ease of choice.

It is important that the feature allow readers to quickly and easily choose which types of images they want to hide (e.g., 5-10 categories), so that people could choose for example to hide sexual imagery but not violent imagery.

Total ?	Total 0	Total 1	Total 2	Total 3	Total 4	Total 5	Total 6	Total 7	Total 8	Total 9	Total 10	Votes	Votes with a preference	Average of those with a preference	Median
595	2193	359	442	407	434	1804	1260	2399	3662	2890	7578	24023	23428	7.2	8
2.48 %	9.13 %	1.49 %	1.84 %	1.69 %	1.81 %	7.51 %	5.24 %	9.99 %	15.24 %	12.03 %	31.54 %

Analysis

Of those who expressed a preference in their votes (that is, they voted anything other than “not enough information”), the community expressed the overwhelming desire that the hiding feature be reversible (median 10), strong support for the suggestion that readers could easily and quickly choose categories (median 8), that the feature be culturally neutral (median 9), and that both logged in and logged out users have access to the feature (median 8). Voters expressed slightly less support for the notion that readers could flag images (median 7). Support for reversible hiding was completely clear, while the other vote distributions were bimodal to varying degrees, most notably for overall importance.

With regard to the assessment of the importance of the filter by respondents, some further analysis was done. The average vote on this question (among those who held an opinion) was 5.74, and the median vote was 6, indicating that a greater number of respondents considered this to be important than unimportant, though the difference is not overwhelming. Of the 8554 voters (36.0% of the total 23754) who rated this either a 10 or a 0, 4791 voters (56.0%) rated it a “10” and 3763 votes (44.0%) rated it a “0”.

A further analysis of the responses to the “importance” question, comparing votes at the extremes of the spectrum, working towards the middle, revealed the following results:

	Selected results		Total
	"10"	"0"
Votes	4791 (56.0 %)	3763 (44.0 %)	8554

	"10 + 9"	"0 + 1"
Votes	6099 (57.2 %)	4553 (42.8 %)	10652

	"10 + 9 + 8"	"0 + 1 + 2"
Votes	9056 (61.3 %)	5716 (38.7 %)	14772

	"10 + 9 + 8 + 7"	"0 + 1 + 2 + 3"
Votes	11726 (63.6 %)	6694 (36.4 %)	18420

	"10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6"	"0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4"
Votes	13526 (64.6 %)	7409 (35.4 %)	20935

The committee also notes the significant number of “0” votes cast for all but one question (ranging from 9% to 16%), which suggests the presence of a sizable number of voters who wished to express their opposition to the basic idea of the image hiding feature. This voting pattern coincides with the anecdotal evidence of both the comments to the Meta page on the feature and the sampled comments of the plebiscite itself.

Results of the comments section

A total of 6956 users added free text comments to their votes (29% of all voters). Of these, a representative sample of 1298 comments (19%) underwent a preliminary review in order to gauge and analyze the tone and content of the comment. The remaining comments will continue to be analyzed by the committee. In addition, word frequency charts were run on the full set of comments.

Methodological note: the sample to be analyzed was created by numbering the comments sequentially in the order in which they were received and then generating a list of random numbers from atmospheric noise using http://www.random.org/integers/. The numbers generated by the randomization process were matched to comment numbers and those comments were analyzed. Translations were obtained by asking native or high fluency speakers for translations. Initial issues with importing unicode characters were resolved in time to include some of those comments in analysis. Because multiple evaluators participated in the review process, a small set of comments was evaluated several times by multiple people to ensure consistency in rating. That set was removed prior to reporting these numbers.

Referendum comments wordcloud

141 words were used more than 500 times in the full set of comments. Below is a table showing most frequent word use and count. Note that differences using modifiers such as “not” were analyzed as well. For instance, the word “controversial” appears 1143 times in the comments, with 19 instances of “non-controversial”, 11 instances of “uncontroversial”, 2 of “noncontroversial”, 1 of “not-controversial”, 1 of “not-so-controversial”, and 7 of “not controversial”. These numbers are representative of other modifiers sampled. These modifiers make up a small but significant percent of the words and should be evaluated more fully for the committee’s final report.

The committee was heartened to see that many non-English words were represented in the table of most frequently used words.

Tone

Of the 1298 comment samples rated for tone, 387 (29.82%) had a positive tone, 376 (28.97%) had a neutral tone, and 535 (41.22%) had a negative tone.

The committee was interested in a particular subset of those who used a positive tone in their comments, in particular whether the commenter made reference to whether they personally intended to use the image filter or whether they believed it was a valuable tool for others. Of that set of “positive tone” comments, 32 (18% of the subset, 2.05% of the full set) made reference to the tool as though it would be of use to the respondent personally. Another 143 (82% of the subset, 9.16% of the full set) referenced the tool as though it would be of use to others.

Comments were also reviewed to identify references to voting problems or issues with the design of the voting process/plebiscite. There were 2 references (0.13%) to voting problems in the reviewed set, and 45 (2.88%) references to concerns with the referendum process itself.

The reviewers further looked for comments that provided particular input as to implementation details, such as suggestions for categorization schemes or other ideas to be provided to the design team. There were 389 such comments in the comment set that was analyzed (24.92%).

In the context of analysis of the comments, one trend emerged very clearly: the negative comments more frequently mentioned objections on a philosophical basis, while positive comments more frequently mentioned practical concerns.

Discussion

The committee is pleased overall with the use of the free text comment field. Although text-based comments provide a challenge for evaluative purposes, the value gained from this field in informing the design process is substantial. The committee wishes to also clearly state that it is fully committed to reading and evaluating every comment, and design/implementation suggestions will be anonymized and passed on to the design team.

Some comments include personally identifiable data, so the committee regrets to advise that a full dump can not be released at this time. It is our hope that a more full and scholarly analysis can be done at a later date.

What comes next?

The numeric results detailing responses to the six statements are now complete and will not be amended in future reports.

The committee will continue to review and analyze the free-text comments, and will issue a final report once this task is complete.

For the Personal Image Filter Referendum Committee,

Risker 01:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Appendix 1

Table of word frequency

Word	Occurences
the	16335
to	15770
10	12434
a	10437
of	9791
'	8908
be	8825
is	8400
and	6977
i	6971
that	6757
it	6275
0	6139
this	5851
in	5756
for	5378
not	5176
images	4274
as	3660
should	3613
or	3484
8	3253
on	2986
if	2973
would	2688
an	2663
5	2583
de	2533
wikipedia	2523
will	2414
are	2397
7	2389
9	2305
by	2279
image	2190
feature	2155
but	2143
have	2133
with	2081
they	1748
people	1690
users	1678
can	1652
6	1572
think	1572
see	1539
all	1500
what	1491
filter	1476
que	1462
content	1462

Word	Occurences
you	1454
do	1376
some	1323
there	1321
2	1315
such	1314
no	1309
la	1288
from	1268
so	1249
their	1203
1	1200
any	1166
its	1161
important	1157
controversial	1143
-1	1132
like	1130
censorship	1127
which	1091
could	1085
dont	1083
about	1083
die	1051
who	1029
more	1027
we	1017
may	1015
at	1013
want	1012
user	987
only	986
also	972
one	967
3	934
me	902
my	891
very	885
en	879
categories	874
es	868
idea	865
neutral	865
wikimedia	817
other	806
im	800
use	793
r	781
4	779
pictures	773
them	771

Word	Occurences
hide	763
les	736
offensive	724
even	721
good	720
view	720
way	717
because	683
make	681
information	674
n	665
am	664
just	652
un	651
culturally	648
cultural	647
nicht	645
des	644
might	644
example	639
then	633
than	628
s	626
has	616
default	603
und	601
those	596
possible	595
children	593
der	592
ich	590
able	578
being	577
sexual	577
le	576
m	571
how	568
f	553
must	551
ist	547
when	534
e	533
filtering	533
wiki	524
o	520
question	519
without	510
pas	510
certain	503
option	502
d	500

Appendix 2

Vote results by project

language	project	votes	avg_age_days	avg_age_years	q1votes	q1avg	q2votes	q2avg	q3votes	q3avg	q4votes	q4avg	q5votes	q5avg	q6votes	q6avg
en	wikipedia	9245	1632.84	4.47	9176	5.89	9056	6.43	9091	6.38	8810	7.27	9090	9.35	9077	7.27
meta	wikipedia	381	1175.94	3.22	376	5.51	373	6.06	370	6.02	365	7.22	376	8.83	368	6.95
ja	wikipedia	313	1197.4	3.28	308	7.76	308	7.48	303	7.5	303	8.4	310	9.24	309	8.56
ru	wikipedia	1627	1004.81	2.75	1591	6.46	1587	6.96	1583	7.38	1535	7	1600	9.49	1592	7.87
de	wikipedia	3923	1326.99	3.63	3863	4.22	3787	5.49	3781	5.35	3573	7.21	3824	9.42	3772	6.24
zh	wikipedia	316	1102.78	3.02	309	7.69	308	7.32	308	8.08	307	8.47	310	9.36	308	8.16
fr	wikipedia	2441	1215.31	3.33	2411	5.73	2341	6.88	2374	6.44	2281	7.97	2385	8.84	2384	7.21
ar	wikipedia	94	1002.58	2.74	94	8.17	94	7.89	91	7.68	90	7.29	94	9.02	89	8.64
commons	commons	220	1147.81	3.14	220	5.31	216	6.04	215	5.67	207	7.3	216	9.34	215	6.73
es	wikipedia	1278	1173.2	3.21	1260	6.44	1235	6.47	1233	6.6	1218	8.11	1250	9.39	1247	7.65
vi	wikipedia	28	798.91	2.19	27	7.11	24	8	25	8.4	27	7.7	25	8.84	23	8.43
en	wikibooks	30	917	2.51	29	6.41	30	6.8	30	6.77	27	7.04	30	8.9	30	7.17
ca	wikipedia	86	1197.43	3.28	84	6.29	85	7.25	84	5.96	80	7.61	85	9.13	84	7.37
nl	wikipedia	695	1272.32	3.48	689	5.24	684	6.12	680	6.38	665	7.03	677	9.17	679	6.77
ko	wikipedia	118	933.23	2.56	117	7.81	114	7.64	113	7.46	113	8.5	117	9.36	115	8.16
it	wikipedia	779	1274.01	3.49	778	5.96	763	6.61	762	7.96	737	8.14	767	9.44	760	7.59
id	wikipedia	49	980.52	2.68	49	8.04	48	7.42	48	7.77	47	8.53	48	8	49	7.88
pl	wikipedia	642	1284.17	3.52	631	5.8	622	6.31	623	6.91	602	6.86	634	9.19	622	7.34
no	wikipedia	93	1350.91	3.7	91	5.49	91	6.51	91	6.85	90	7.28	91	8.96	91	7.02
hu	wikipedia	108	1201.16	3.29	107	6.6	105	7.16	100	6.14	98	6.84	106	8.88	105	8.02
he	wikipedia	171	1098.57	3.01	170	7.27	169	7.58	166	7.1	153	6.48	163	8.94	163	7.8
fa	wikipedia	65	953.01	2.61	64	7.56	65	7.4	64	7.2	64	7.22	64	8.98	64	8.25
bg	wikipedia	21	1212.47	3.32	21	5.1	21	5.57	21	6.52	21	6.57	20	9.7	21	6.95
uk	wikipedia	108	915.94	2.51	107	6.81	106	5.91	107	7.07	101	6.99	108	8.99	107	7.66
et	wikipedia	21	1114.1	3.05	21	3.38	20	5.4	19	4.63	18	5.5	21	8.62	20	6.3
fi	wikipedia	62	1347.23	3.69	62	5.06	60	5.8	62	6.23	60	7.83	61	9.66	61	7
pt	wikipedia	226	1179.38	3.23	224	6.9	225	6.56	211	7.19	209	8.33	222	9.6	224	8.11
sv	wikipedia	147	1288.26	3.53	146	3.34	140	5.34	141	4.93	136	7.76	143	9.36	140	5.88
mediawiki	mediawiki	28	998.87	2.73	28	5.29	28	6.36	28	6.64	26	7.46	27	8.59	27	7.52
da	wikipedia	34	1359.06	3.72	34	3.47	33	5	33	4.39	33	7.21	33	8.64	33	5.79
en	wiktionary	38	1037.41	2.84	37	5.89	37	7.49	36	6.39	33	6.36	35	9.6	35	7.74
ro	wikipedia	25	1297.14	3.55	25	4.84	25	5	24	6.5	24	5.75	24	9.17	25	6.68
tr	wikipedia	43	1201.11	3.29	43	6.93	42	7.38	40	7.2	38	8.58	41	8.9	40	8.55
cs	wikipedia	142	1297.05	3.55	140	4.69	141	6.06	138	6.29	136	6.67	139	9.71	137	7.32
consolidated	multiple	426	1005.31	2.75	422	6.41	413	6.7	414	6.69	397	7.78	416	9.35	412	7.57

Note: All votes from projects which had a total vote count of less than 20 were folded into the 'consolidated projects' line item in the table above to protect the confidentiality of votes. Those projects include: ptwikisource; simplewiki; tewiki; enwikisource; sawiki; dawikisource; cywiki; cuwiki; frwikisource; specieswiki; mlwiki; itwikisource; gawiki; frwikibooks; gvwiki; ltwiki; bswiki; sqwikinews; lvwiki; orwiki; ndswiki; dewiktionary; ocwiki; swwiki; nlwikibooks; frwikinews; srwiki; incubatorwiki; slwiki; eowiki; enwikinews; dewikinews; be_x_oldwiki; simplewiktionary; lawiki; itwikiquote; hewikisource; tawiki; viwikisource; elwiki; knwiki; ptwikibooks; ttwiki; svwikisource; oswiki; hrwiki; hewikibooks; kuwiki; frwikiversity; ruwiktionary; svwiktionary; mkwiki; mswiki; eswiktionary; suwiki; frwiktionary; angwiki; enwikiversity; iawiki; enwikiquote; mtwiki; afwiktionary; ptwiktionary; plwiktionary; alswiki; kshwiki; skwiki; hewiktionary; nds_nlwiki; ckbwiki; dewikiversity; ruwikisource; cswiktionary; cawikisource; nnwiki; dewikibooks; iswiktionary; iswiki; gawiktionary; kawiki; fiwiktionary; pflwiki; hiwiki; hywiki; frwikiquote; glwiki; lmowiki; huwikisource; bewiki; lbwiki; elwikiversity; itwiktionary; svwikinews; shwiki; eowikibooks; thwiki; zhwikisource; bnwiki; lnwiki; eswikibooks; huwiktionary; viwiktionary; elwikisource; tlwiki; emlwiki; kywiki; klwiki; ladwiki; ruwikibooks; anwiki; svwikibooks; itwikibooks; ptwikinews; roa_tarawiki; arzwiki; barwiki; bgwiktionary; sowiki; afwiki; nowiktionary; huwikiquote; frrwiki; astwiki; dewikisource; lvwiktionary; zhwikiquote; betawikiversity; itwikiversity; acewiki; kywikiquote; yiwiki; vecwiki; sahwiki; cawikibooks; siwiki; aswiki; zh_yuewiki; cawiktionary; bgwikisource; kmwiki; bgwikiquote; euwiki

Appendix 3

Average vote on Q1 by age of account

Age of account	Average vote	% of votes represented
90 days or less	6.645614035	1%
91 - 180 days	6.32183908	2%
181 days to 1 year	6.372141372	5%
1 - 2 years	6.223976109	11%
2 - 3 years	6.081090407	14%
3 - 4 years	5.844198175	15%
4 - 5 years	5.809265537	22%
5 - 6 years	5.524947784	21%
6 - 7 years	5.439243924	5%
7 + years	5.331649832	3%