Research:WMF Strategy document: Research about contributors/What we have
 | This page in a nutshell: This page documents an overview of research topics about content contributors gathered by Wikimedia Staff: User:Halfak (WMF), User:HaithamS (WMF), User:Siko (WMF), User:Guillaume_(WMF) and User:Slaporte (WMF). It was copied whole-sale from an internal wiki to this page on 17:44, 1 February 2017 (UTC) |
High-level stats[edit]
| Year | Page | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Ongoing | Active editors dashboard | WMF analytics dashboard allows us to see rolling active editors for prior month of any project |
| Ongoing | Edit history charts for top 50 Wikipedias | |
| Ongoing? | List of Wikipedias | Note the Depth metric: "The "Depth" column (Edits/Articles × Non-Articles/Articles × [1−Stub-ratio]) is a rough indicator of a Wikipedia’s quality, showing how frequently its articles are updated." |
| Ongoing | List of Wikimedia projects by size | |
| Ongoing | High-level Wikimedia stats portal | |
| Ongoing | Wikimedia project summaries | See a verbose chart with similar data on articles, number of active editors, etc |
| Ongoing | New Wikipedians | |
| 2002-2012/13 | Wikimedia project growth | |
| Ongoing | Site performance dashboards for editors | For example, see Visual Editor latency |
| 2009-2014 | Squid reports of edits by country | |
| ? | What skins do our users use? | |
| ? | Bot activity chart | |
| Ongoing | Activity by mailing list | |
| 2002-2014 | New admins on ENWP by month | |
| Ongoing? | Users/admins compared to other wikis | |
| Unknown? | Edits from Mobile? | |
| 2007-2014 | Education dashboard |
Survey resources[edit]
| Year | Survey | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | WMSV infographic on contributors | Based on this research. |
| 2012 - 2015 | Fundraising focus groups | Available with Megan |
| 2014 | Global South Survey | Available with Haitham |
| 2012 | Editor survey (questions) | Tilman not yet releasing data, concerned about how it will be used due to incomparable collection methodologies |
| Dec 2011 | Editor survey | |
| Apr 2011 | Editor survey | |
| 2008 | Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT (with WMF) | Blog posts & lots of backstory on Meta. |
| 2009 | Multimedia study | |
| ? | Wikipedia Library user survey | Survey of active content contributors using The Wikipedia Library (spoiler alert: they want more free resources) |
| ? | Ongoing usability surveys | Check w/ Abby? |
| 2013 | WMNL survey | |
| 2014 | Survey from Wiki Ed Foundation |
Key finding about surveys: Collection methodology differed from each survey, and much of the methodology was flawed so unlikely to be repeated in future. Thus, can't help us benchmark for year over year changes. Much of the data in these surveys is old enough that it may be better to start over, and think about a cleaner year-to-year collection setup.
Resources on trends[edit]
| Year | Study | Descriptions |
|---|---|---|
| Ongoing | Activity chart from the top 50 Wikipedias | |
| 2010 | 2010 strategy editor trends study | |
| 2012 | Editor Milestones | |
| 2012 | Portuguese Wikipedia trends and behavior | |
| 2014 | The sudden decline of Italian Wikipedia | |
| 2014 | Grantmaking's analysis of Global South contributor trends + gender diversity summary | see slides 4-6 |
Trends needing canonical source[edit]
There are a few trends that I have heard discussed around WMF and the Wikimedia community, and I am curious if there is a canonical reference point for these:
- Deletionism
- Deletionism is an age-old debate from within the community. Does it matter for our high-level discussion of content contributors? Stephen (talk) 20:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
- Rule bloat
- ENWP has a ton of policies. A bunch of people have discussed this as a problem. Stephen (talk) 20:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
- Editor lifecycle
- Around 2010-11, I know the WMF developed a model "lifecycle" for contributors (based on research) that influenced the Growth Team's work. Was this formalized and preserved anywhere? Is it still up-to-date? Stephen (talk) 20:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
- Participation metric
- Why do we use "edit count" as a metric for participation? Stephen (talk) 07:51, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Structure and organization of content contributors[edit]
| Date | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ongoing | Wikimonicon (Who are the community? and The community's work) | An intro to the community, for WMF staff |
| July 2012 | Wikimania presentation on editor motivations | |
| 2012 | Philippe's talk on how not to structure a community | We should get this from Philippe |
| 2013 | Wikimedia movement mindmap | Note where content projects fit into the |
| 2014 | Organizational hierarchy of content contributors | See these pages for some context and Wikipedia sociology |
Programs that (might) impact contributors[edit]
| Project | Program | Who initiated? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| RUWP | Инкубатор (new editor assistance) | Community | |
| ENWP | Teahouse | WMF | New editors who visit the Teahouse contribute 2-3x more than the control group w/ similar early editing patterns (measured in # of edits, # of articles, # of talk page discussions, and # of weeks they return to Wikipedia. [1] |
| FRWP | Forum des nouveaux | Community | |
| global | On-wiki writing contests | Community / Grantees (?) | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
| global | WLM | Grantees | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
| global | Wikipedia Education Program | WMF (?) | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
| global | Edit-a-thons | Community / grantees(?) | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
| global | Editing workshops | Community(?) | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
| global | Other photo initiatives | Community(?) | let's pull out any key contributor findings from this report |
- See Warncke-Wang, M., Ayukaev, V. R., Hecht, B., & Terveen, L. The Success and Failure of Quality Improvement Projects in Peer Production Communities. pdf -- Reviews the effect of a bunch of Wiki initiatives to increase editing.
Research repositories[edit]
| Repository | Notes |
|---|---|
| [Wikimedia Research Projects] | WMF's research on various topics |
| WikiLit | A literature review of Wikipedia |
| WikiPapers | Bibliography and other details of scholarly research of wikis |
| "wikipedia" tag on CiteULike | Some citations? |
| usability:Category:Multimedia usability - Research and Multimedia Usability Project report (2009-2010) |
General[edit]
Resources[edit]
- Meatball Wiki
- strategy:Wikimedia-pedia and strategy:Participation
- DataHub dumps
- The Growth Team did a few very interesting studies.
- Contributing to Wikipedia
- Global South Strategy (see slide 4, 7, etc)
- Grantmaking quarterly review (see slides 33-34)
Other communities[edit]
- StackExchange editor decline (serverfault) — A recent (2014-12) thread on wiki-research-l
- Digital Ecologies Research Partnership
Random facts[edit]
| Question | Notes |
|---|---|
| When do people usually edit? | 20:00-21:00 UTC for registered users, 0:00-1:00 UTC for unregstered |
| How many edits come from AWB? | 3% of all Wikipedia {{citation needed}} |
| What Wikipedia gets the most unregistered activity? | ? |