The ~Seaweed~ Experiment

The experiment has finished. We have analyzed the feedback, and the results are coming soon.

What We Aim to Achieve

The experiment focuses on using both traditional and seamless editing with Web blogs. The goals for the experiment are:

To discover the types of situations people prefer seamless editing over the traditional way of editing.
To discover the types of situations people prefer using raw HTML syntax, WYSIWYG editors or seamless editing for creating and editing content.
To measure intuitiveness of seamless editing; that is, how well people who have substantial experience with the traditional way of editing take on this new process of editing.
To help discover any major bugs or flaws in the Seaweed software.
To discover what the public thinks of the idea, and to identify the most important aspects of the software that should be changed, added or removed.

Who can Participate?

Anyone who has a Wordpress blog can take part. Participants will download and install a Wordpress Plugin which allows them to seamlessly edit their blog posts, pages and comments.

The Procedure

Download and install the Wordpress Plugin.
You will then fill out a quick registration form. (This can be completed from this website, or via the plugin once you successfully install it).
Note: you can download and install the plugin then register later, or register first and then download the plugin - which ever way suits you.
You will be emailed a unique id and key which you will use to initiate your test run.
You will continue blog as you have been for two weeks using either the ~Seaweed~ plugin, or your usual editor to create and edit posts/pages/comments.
Note: it does not matter if you only submit one post in the two week duration, nor does it matter if you use one editor more over another.
At the end of two weeks you will be prompted to fill out a short survey.

Note: you can monitor your progress by logging into the test run management web page.

Data Captured from Your Test Run

All editing-related activity will be logged. This activity will include full-text of any posts, comments and pages that you create or edit (including drafts).

The activity will only be logged when you register and "initiate" your test run.

Confidentiality

Protocols have been put in place to ensure that your data remains secure and that you will remain anonymous in any reports written based on your participance.

All data will be stored in a password-protected database only accessible by the researcher.
All logged data will be encrypted before being sent to the research server using a unique private key only known by yourself and the researcher.
Only the researcher will decrypt the data after the data collection on a private local store only accessible by the researcher. The researcher will be the only person who will possess the decryption code.
Secure protocols are used for sending authentication and activity logging data over all communication channels.
The logged data, registration form and survey will be archived in the University of Waikato's SCMS Data Archive (New Zealand). The log data will remain encrypted (to prevent any data handlers' eyes from viewing full texts), no emails will be archived, all URLs will be scrambled. The data will be then destroyed on the 1st of March 2020
Only researchers with approval from the SCMS Ethics Comittee will have access to the data archives.

Hearing About the Results

Once the data has been captured and analyzed the findings will be presented on this website. The results will also be published in a masters thesis, and possibly future publications.

Being Credited for Your Participance

As a participant in this experiment you will be helping the free open source ~Seaweed~ project AND the academic research on seamless editing. The data gathered from a participant is highly valuable so we would like to give credit to those who choose to help us.

We will forever welcome those who participate to our open development community. When you complete the survey, you will be given the option to be listed in the ~Seaweed~ project's credits as a tester. You can provide a real name or an alias if you prefer to be anonymous. Credits will be forever listed on the project website, help documentations and within the project source distributions.

Withdrawing from the Experiment

If you are unable to complete your test run, you can simply uninstall the plugin. We would appreciate it if you tell us you are withdrawing.