Research talk:Wikipedia Editors Survey 2011

Bad idea

This survey is a bad idea. First of all, the makers never realized that asking some of the privacy-sensitive questions is limited by law in many countries throughout the world.

Second, the translations for many of the questions are missing at the moment the survey was started. This is an error that never should be made.

Third, the link to the survey didn't work on some wikis at the time the survey was started. Since it will only show up once, many editors missed the whole thing.

Fourth, the number of questions is too large. How many people will complete this survey? If it is over 10%, you're lucky.

Fifth, some questions, starting with the first one, cannot be answered by many contributors. How do I know how many edits I've made??? And do I care? I'll just fill in a random number, and I think many others will do that as well. A very bad start of any survey.

Sixth, what information do you want to gather? Many of the questions are useless for any purpose, as far as I can see

Finally, shouldn't a project like this be discussed in a broader forum first? You are spamming many projects with a survey that doesn't make sense, is loaded with errors, and annoys and confuses thousands of people.

Quistnix 17:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree on this matter. It's not carefully thought through before it was lounched.--Rodejong 10:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You can get the number of edits by using toolserver.org…

In my language, I did not even understand the first question - bad translation probably. And I will not answer all the questions about age, sex, etc. I think that is none of your business, the more so because no reason was given why you want that information. They are not optional, so I could not answer the rest. Regards, Wammes Waggel 14:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

They want that information so that they can accurately describe the kinds of people who work on the projects. They want to be able to say things like "15% of editors are women" or "20% of editors are not legally adults" or things like that. Also, if they discover that practically all older people (for example) say that they like a particular thing, but practically all younger people dislike it, then they can make better choices about how to design the websites. WhatamIdoing 23:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I have to say this isn't the best survey I've ever seen (to say the least). I've tried taking it in English, to bypass the supposed translation problems, and giving nonsensical answers (still ticking each needed box every time), but even then I invariably get a popup that says that I did not complete one of the required fields. Which one of the about 500 fields on the first page alone?? Even if I where to answer each question correctly (as I'm not willing to do as the Wikimedia Foundation is a bunch of amateurs I do not trust with my personal data) I'd be fed up with the survey even before I'd passed the first page... Niels 00:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Being anonymous is practically impossible for a lot of people. Like me for example. I'm one of the few Dutch editors living in Italy. If I give honest answers everybody can track me easily. So for me no survey is better to continue my real life. I'm a volunteer and the questions are none of your business. Sorry... patio4it 08:37, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Feedback on specific questions

Is there a Wikimedia Chapter in that country?

This needs a "sort of" option for editors who are in America but who are not in New York City. There is no USA chapter, thus there is no chapter for the country. However, there is one chapter in the country.

Please choose the TOP TWO words that describe Wikipedia editors.

I'd have preferred to decline this, or to choose more than two words. Wikipedia editors are all of these things. I myself am probably all of these things, or at least perceived as being all of these things in different situations. I found none of these words more compelling than any other words. I could have given you a clear example of each one. More compelling choices might include "absurdly confident that discussion produces widespread agreement, despite ample evidence to the contrary", "distrustful of authority", and "highly committed to due process".

On a 1-10 scale with 1 being NOT AT ALL GOOD and 10 being EXTREMELY GOOD, how would you rate the performance of Wikimedia volunteers [also chapters] overall, in contributing to the Wikimedia movement?

By definition, the overall performance of a population is the median. If you find a cluster of answers at 5 or 6, that will only prove that Wikipedians have a better grasp of statistics than the average person. WhatamIdoing 23:53, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion

I would also like to suggest that you consider inquiring about whether editors have any disabilities in a future survey.

I saw a (male) editor recently saying that he had a psychiatric disability (major depression? I've forgotten now) and that he figured that, like himself, most working-age males who were active editors were probably also too disabled to work.

If you do this, it might be useful to distinguish between major classes of disability (mental illness, physical disabilities, and especially visual disabilities) and between severity (mild disability to disability severe enough to prevent regular, full-time work). WhatamIdoing 00:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

How can the survey be accessed?

I am attempting to find out how the survey can be accessed but am getting nowhere.

I am willing to take the survey because I find that Wikipedia has recently been getting worse. Though I have over tens of thousands contributions in Wikipedias in various languages and have written several featured articles, my recent experience with Wikipedia has induced me to stop any further contributions to Wikipedia.

The problem is that when I raise various questions, there seems to be no way to get an answer. The administrators and bureaucrats do not intervene in various discussions, I get very rude answers to my questions and all discussions are disconcertingly superficial.

The idea of having a survey is good, if there was a way to access the survey. But until I find a way to express my concerns I am not contributing with any more articles to Wikipedia and am also not supporting it financially. Wikipedia was a wonderful idea. Unfortunately it seems to have been taken over by people who have no other scope than to eliminate the people who have contributed until now. There seems to be nobody in charge and Wikipedia is just like a boat without a rudder which is drifting away in the wind. Afil 01:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to answer your question (even though I'm not an admin of some sort and I'm not involved with WMF, just a normal user). The survey can be found here. It was specially designed so the banner would only show one (1) single time. I have no idea whatsoever why WMF did this, but that's the case. I hope I answered your questions. Greetings, Kthoelen 18:24, 1 May 2011 (UTC) P.S.: I agree with you on the last part of your comment, fyi.

Result?

Are the result released? Where is it? Or, still working? --Waihorace 13:54, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

"Analysis, reporting writing and review" was supposed to take place during week 22-24 (3-5 weeks after the survey launch). It looks like it has been 6 going on 7 weeks since the launch. Maybe the foundation did not get the results it expected.Cptnono 18:28, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

We will be sharing the results from the survey starting this week through a series of blog posts. Manipande 16:52, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Tick tick tick... You working on Saturday or do you just plan on drinking some coffee Friday morning so that it happens.Cptnono 05:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

A couple blog posts have appeared ([1], [2]) with a report of some aggregate data ([3]). I suggest updating this page with links to published results, and updating the page as progress continues with correlating and analyzing the results. There is an tendency for wiki work to become scattered across multiple venues so, if the work is to have enduring value, it is important for the project page to tie the pieces together. ~ Ningauble 17:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Race, ethnicity and religion

I'd propose that the next survey also ask participants about race, ethnicity and religious affiliation (practising or non-practising). These are standard demographic survey items; by not having any data on them, we are less well equipped to note and address imbalances.

Without this data, it also isn't really possible to perform a meaningful analysis of Q24. To give a theoretical example: Assume only 5 of 5,000 respondents say they recall stereotyping because of their ethnicity or religion. We would report that 99.9% of editors feel there is no ethnic/religious stereotyping. Sounds great, right? But those 5 editors who did recall stereotyping might be the only editors who belong to a particular minority. In other words, 100% of editors in that minority group may report stereotyping. That would be a problem we are unable to detect, unless we collect these data. --JN466 18:25, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Software

What is the name of the Software, you used for this survey? --ChrGermany 16:07, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

We used LimeSurvey for the April 2011 Survey. After facing several speed and security issues, we have switched to Qualtrics. Akhanna 19:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Rename

As we have several Editor Survey, and two in 2011, I think these pages should be renamed to include "April". John Vandenberg (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

This makes sense; obviously "Wikipedia Editors Survey 2011" was a somewhat unfortunate page name choice for the April 2011 survey and it has been bothering me for a while as well.

However what we shouldn't do, even though it may seem desirable from a logical standpoint, is to make Wikipedia Editor Survey 2011 into a disambiguation page - there are too many outside links pointing to this page, which can't be easily adjusted. So it should remain a redirect to (say) Wikipedia Editor Survey April 2011.

If someone wants to carry out this move, note also that there are various subpages, and translation pages which are not subpages (see Template:Translation/Wikipedia Editors Survey 2011/Translation) which would need to be moved as well.

BTW, there is also commons:Category:Wikipedia Editors Survey 2011.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 09:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC)