Stephen Downes takes a look at my recent piece regarding CC license selection behavior and says “the data don’t support [Wiley’s] hypothesis” that the proportion of creators choosing the license is directly proportional to the rights reserved in the license.” Toward the end of my paper I claim that:
While WiSH holds up when licenses are aggregated according to the number of conditions comprising them, there appears to be very little support for WiSH at the grain size of individual licenses.
The data actually support the hypothesis quite well when licenses and selection behavior are looked at in the aggregate. In fact, the prediction and the behavior match perfectly. It is only at a more fine grained level when the predictions fail to match user behavior.
So, the big question is, what is the value of the proposed prediction mechanism (WiSH)? I’m not sure I know. But I’m not ready to throw it out yet because it only works at certain levels of aggregation. Thoughts?
UPDATE: Here’s Stephen’s comment which was made during the blog’s transition to its new home.