Grants:IdeaLab/Survey of hostile experiences among new editors

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Survey of hostile experiences among new editors

The basic idea of this proposal is to conduct a survey of people who recently started editing Wikipedia, and to ask them whether they felt that an experienced editor acted too rude or hostile to them as a result of the new editor's edits. Ideally, such a survey would include both IPs and logged-in users, as well as both currently active and non-active users. But it wouldn't include vandals, of course, as they deserve to be treated with hostility. The main point of this proposal is to see whether newcomers are actually being bitten (in violation of en:WP:BITE) on a regular basis, thereby discouraging prospective good-faith contributors from sticking around.

countryUnited States

themenot sure

idea creator• IntoThinAir

this project needs...

volunteer

developer

advisor

project manager

community organizer

designer

researcher

contact email

created on23:28, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Project idea

What Wikimedia project(s) and specific areas will you be evaluating?

Is this project measuring a specific space on a project (e.g. deletion discussions), or the project as a whole?
English Wikipedia, specifically, as noted earlier, the experiences of users (who respond to a survey) who either have been active for less than 1 month, or were active for less than 1 month before leaving.

Describe your idea. How might it be implemented?

Provide details about the method or process of how you will evaluate your community or collect data. Does your idea involve private or personally identifying information? Take a look at the Privacy Policy for Wikimedia’s guidelines in this area.
Honestly I haven't really come up with a plan as to how this survey could be done, and my knowledge of how to design such surveys is very limited, so I can't describe the methodology in too much detail. But I know the WMF has done surveys on similar-ish subjects in the past so the methodology would be similar to that of previous studies (like those of the gender gap [1]).

Are there experienced Wikimedians who can help implement this project?

If applicable, please list groups or usernames of individuals who you can work with on this project, and what kind of work they will do.
If EpochFail (Aaron Halfaker) could help provide input and design this project (assuming it's even feasible and would actually be worth the effort), I'd really appreciate that.

How would your measurement idea help your community make better decisions?

After you are finished measuring or evaluating your Wikimedia project, how do you expect that information to be used to benefit the project?

Do you think you can implement this idea? What support do you need?

Do you need people with specific skills to complete this idea? Are there any financial needs for this project? If you can’t implement this project, can you scale down your project so it is doable?
As indicated earlier, I can't do this myself.

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About the idea creator

Username is IntoThinAir now, but for almost 3 years it was "Everymorning" and for almost 2 years before that it was "Jinkinson".

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Does your idea not require funding, but you're not sure about what to do next? Not sure how to start a proposal on your local project that needs consensus? Contact Chris Schilling on-wiki at I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs) or via e-mail at cschillingwikimedia.org for help!