Research talk:Resources

Long term research

Why are there no long-term research projects to gather data about Wiki contributors and editors over the lifespan of the website? I see lots of small projects, conferences that were offered a year or two, it's completely hit-or-miss. I understand you want to support small grant projects but trying to find basic data about WMF and Wikipedia itself over its 12 year life is like looking for buried treasure. There are no consistent survey questions, no consistent methods, it's just a mish-mash, a jumble of finished and unfinished work.

It would be worth it to devote staff time to analyze all of the projects that have been done, compiling what is useful or revealing and making it available in report form so inquirers don't have to look at dozens of separate projects.

The fact that this is the first post on this Talk Page doesn't make me optimistic anyone will ever see these comments and reply but I'll post them anyway. Newjerseyliz (talk) 20:33, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

If you really mean just "gather data", our platform for regular statistical data is stats: (Wikistats). All the metrics we care about should be added there so that they are regularly updated and discoverable.

As for regular longitudinal research/analysis, that's another matter. The only piece of periodic research I can recall is the editor survey (there was a question about it just now: [1]). --Nemo 16:47, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Successor

There seems to be a proposal to supersede this page: mw:Data & Developer Hub. --Nemo 07:52, 10 June 2014 (UTC)