Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change/Questions for researchers/Survey questions

This page collects the survey questions that will be asked to stakeholders.

1. Introduction and Consent

You are invited to participate in a survey for the project « Visual Analytics for Sustainability and Climate Change: Assessing online open content and supporting community engagement. The case of Wikipedia », promoted by the Institute of Design at SUPSI (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and carried out with the patronage of Wikimedia Italia and partnerships with WikiProject Climate Change, Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Wiki in Africa, and the Open Climate Campaign.

The goal of this project is to co-design an open-source visual-analytics tool that helps editors, researchers, educators, and other stakeholders explore, assess, and monitor content across Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The project focuses on climate change, but the tool will be adaptable to any topic of interest.

The survey aims to understand your needs and workflows when exploring climate‑change and sustainability data on Wikimedia projects. Your feedback will guide the design of the tool.

The survey will take approximately 10–15 minutes to complete.

Data protection and licensing notice

This survey collects the responses you provide to the questions asked; there are two types of answers: defined responses, and free-form responses.

Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary. While the survey is designed to be anonymous, you may choose to provide an email address at the end if you are open to follow-up contact (this is optional). You may skip any question in the survey. You may withdraw at any time by closing the survey window.

By submitting your responses, you agreed to the transfer, storage, and use of the collected information to Germany (location of LimeSurvey servers) and Switzerland, and other locations that may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, as may be necessary to carry out the purposes and objectives discussed above. Survey responses will be stored securely and used solely for research purposes. The results of this survey will be retained indefinitely.

Licensing of Survey Responses : by answering the free-form response questions, you agree that we may record your answers, and agree to donate them to the public domain under the terms of Creative Commons Zero 1.0 (full text available here).

The results of this survey will be shared publicly in the following manner: aggregate data about the defined-response questions, and some anonymized quotes from the free-form response questions, will be published, for transparency and future research.

Published data will exclude any personally identifying information. Any identifiable information, such as email addresses, will be accessible only to the research team and will not be published or shared beyond the project.

We may disclose any collected information when required by law or when we have your permission.

For questions about this survey, or to update your answers, email contact: Chiara Somajni chiara.somajni [at]. supsi.ch

Credits

Project Team: Iolanda Pensa, Giovanni Profeta, Chiara Somajni, Florence Devouard, Sage Ross, Nicole Schwitter, Cristian Scapozza, Florian Maximilian Meier.
Survey curated by Nicole Schwitter, in collaboration with the project team.
More information on the project: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visual_Analytics_for_Sustainability_and_Climate_Change

Please check the following box to start the survey:

☐ I have read the above and consent to participate in this study.

2. Participant Background

What best describes your current role(s)?

(Check all that apply)

☐ Wikipedia/Wikimedia editor
☐ Researcher/scientist
☐ Educator
☐ Student
☐ Climate or sustainability professional
☐ Data analyst or visualisation specialist
☐ Journalist / communicator
☐ Policy-maker
☐ Advocate
☐ Other (please specify): __________

How often do you actively use or work with the following?

(Please rate from 1 = Never to 6 = Daily)

English Wikipedia
Italian Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
French Wikipedia
Other language versions of Wikipedia
Wikidata
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia metadatasets (e.g., pageviews, edits, geotags, citations)

How confident are you using the following tools?

(Please rate from 1 = Not confident to 5 = Expert)

Basic data-analysis tools (e.g., spreadsheets such as LibreOffice Calc, Microsoft Office Excel, Google Sheets)
Advanced data-analysis tools (e.g., R, Python)

What are your typical tasks on Wikimedia projects?

(Select all that apply)

Content contribution and editing

☐ Browsing or reading articles
☐ Creating new articles
☐ Editing or updating articles
☐ Translating articles between language versions
☐ Tagging or categorizing content
☐ Uploading or curating media on Wikimedia Commons
☐ Editing or contributing to Wikidata entries
☐ Using or developing templates, modules, or infoboxes
☐ Moderating or patrolling edits (e.g., recent changes, anti-vandalism)
☐ Running bots or automated scripts

Data and analysis

☐ Querying data via the API or data dumps
☐ Using Pageview Analysis or similar dashboards
☐ Using Wikimedia data for external research, tools, or visualisations
☐ Other (please specify): __________

3. Current practices

How do you currently find and access information on Wikimedia projects?

(Select all that apply)

☐ I browse Wikipedia articles manually
☐ I compare articles across different language editions
☐ I use Wikimedia tools like Pageview Analysis or Wikistats
☐ I employ external scripts, bots, or APIs
☐ I download and analyse database dumps
☐ I use third-party dashboards or visual analytics tools // if yes, which ones: ___
☐ Other (please specify): ___________

What signals or indicators do you typically use to judge the quality, completeness, or relevance of Wikipedia articles?

(Select all that apply)

☐ Article quality class (e.g., Featured, Good)
☐ Article length
☐ Article protection
☐ Lead section length
☐ Number of contributors or editors
☐ Number of contributors or editors watching the page
☐ Date of creation and last edit
☐ Date of last edit
☐ Talk-page activity (discussions)
☐ Citation counts and sources quality
☐ Pageview trends or traffic data
☐ Revision history or edit frequency
☐ Cross-language coverage or differences
☐ Number of images
☐ Warning tags at the top of articles
☐ Warning tags at the sentence level
☐ Other (please specify): ___________

Please rank up to the top 5 most important signals you consider relevant to evaluate article quality:

___________
___________
___________
___________
___________

How easy or difficult is it for you to access the above signals?

(Rate each on a scale from 1 = Very difficult to 5 = Very easy) // show only the selected ones

☐ Article quality class (e.g., Featured, Good)
☐ Article length
☐ Article (semi-)protection
☐ Lead section length
☐ Number of contributors or editors
☐ Number of contributors or editors watching the page
☐ Date of creation and last edit
☐ Date of last edit
☐ Talk-page activity (discussions)
☐ Citation counts and sources quality
☐ Pageview trends or traffic data
☐ Revision history or edit frequency
☐ Cross-language coverage or differences
☐ Number of images
☐ Warning tags

Is there specific information about Wikipedia articles which could facilitate their evaluation and which you cannot access easily?

[Open text]

What challenges or pain points do you face when searching for or evaluating content on Wikimedia projects?

[Open text]

How important is it for you to assess the impact of your work using Wikimedia data?

(1 = Not important at all, 5 = Very important)

In what ways do you currently measure impact?

(Select all that apply)

☐ I do not measure impact ☐ Pageviews or readership numbers ☐ Media coverage or citations in external reports/papers ☐ Mentions in policy documents or institutional reports ☐ Engagement from the community (e.g., edits, talk page discussions) ☐ Other: _______

4. Feature needs and preferences

The goal of this project is to co-design an open-source visual-analytics tool that helps editors, researchers, educators, and other stakeholders explore, assess, and monitor content across Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. In the following, we want to know what features might be most relevant for you. The project focuses on climate change, but the tool will be adaptable to any topic of interest. The current prototype of the tool can be found here: https://giovannipro.github.io/wikipedia-climate-change/

The project builds upon the project “Wikipedia and the Italian School” (Wikipedia e la scuola italiana, founded by Wikimedia Italia, 2020 ongoing Wikidata:Q117279813) which produced a visualisation tool that maps the status of Italian Wikipedia articles related to school programs (https://itwiki-scuola-italiana.toolforge.org/).

How useful would each of the following features be for your work with content on Wikimedia projects?

(Rate each from 1 = Not useful at all to 5 = Very useful)

☐ Track article size and edit history over time
☐ Track reader interest over time (pageviews)
☐ Track editor interest over time (article on watch lists)
☐ Track protection status over time
☐ Track topics on discussion pages over time
☐ Quality indicators overlay (e.g., article rating, citation counts, number of editors)
☐ Explore article topics using clustering, keywords, or co-occurring terms
☐ Connect related articles and content (e.g. via citations, events, editors)
☐ Interactive filtering and sorting (e.g., by date range, length, article quality, language)
☐ Alerts (e.g., spikes in activity or emerging topics)
☐ Export functions (e.g., CSV download, image export, interactive embeds)
☐ Identify indicators of article quality (e.g. warning tags, citations, discussion activity)
☐ View geospatial maps (based on article geotags or Wikidata coordinates)
☐ Translation/coverage gaps across languages (e.g., see missing articles)
☐ Access links to scientific papers or external references

Which of the above features would be most essential to your work?

(Select up to 3)

☐ Tracking article activity over time (growth, edits, protection, discussions)
☐ Tracking interest over time (pageviews, editors, watch lists)
☐ Article quality indicators (ratings, citations, warning tags, contributors, etc.)
☐ Exploring topics (clustering, keywords, related content, co-occurring terms)
☐ Map-based visualisations (geotags, coordinates)
☐ Comparing languages (translation and coverage gaps)
☐ Access to external links and references (papers, external sources)
☐ Topic clustering
☐ Article/content linking
☐ Interactive filtering/sorting by traits
☐ Alerts (spikes in activity, emerging topics)
☐ Exporting and sharing data

Do you have any other features in mind that you consider relevant?

[open text]

How would you measure or recognise the usefulness of a visualising tool for Wikipedia articles?

(Select all that apply)

☐ Helps me discover content gaps or underdeveloped articles
☐ Helps me monitor Wikipedia activity (e.g. edits, views, spikes)
☐ Helps me compare articles across languages
☐ Helps me communicate findings with others (e.g. students, collaborators)
☐ Helps me demonstrate the impact of my / my group's work to others (e.g. stakeholders)
☐ Saves me time in collecting or processing Wikimedia data
☐ Helps me understand relationships between articles, editors, or topics
☐ Improves the visibility or credibility of climate-related content
☐ Other (please specify): ___________

What kinds of impact would you most like this tool to help you demonstrate?

[Open text]

5. Demographics

The following questions help us understand the background and diversity of participants.

In what year were you born?

Open text

In which country are you currently based?

[Open-text]

What is your first language?

[Open text]

What other languages do you read or contribute to Wikipedia in?

[Open text]

How would you describe your gender?

☐ Woman
☐ Man
☐ Non-binary / third gender
☐ Prefer to self-describe: __________

6. Outro

We sincerely thank you for your time and input. Your responses will help us better understand how to design meaningful tools to support the evaluation and development of content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

If you are open to being contacted for a follow-up conversation or interview, you can optionally leave your email address below. This is entirely voluntary and your contact information will only be accessible to the research team.

☐ I am willing to be contacted for follow-up interviews Email address (optional): ________

If you have any questions, would like to get in touch with the research team, or want to keep up-to-date with this research project, please check the meta page of this project: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visual_Analytics_for_Sustainability_and_Climate_Change

Thank you again for contributing to this research!