Research talk:Wikipedia Progression of Participation

Hello! We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. -- Jantin

Thoughts

I'd add another level - surveying this cohort after two years. Long term studies have obvious advantages. Also, I'd ask the participants to opt-in for the available edit counters (just to simplify your job). --Piotrus 21:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. A longer-term follow-up is a great idea. We're hoping this smaller-scale project will yield good results and we can push for a larger grant which will allow us to track and survey Wikipedians over a longer period of time as you suggest. --Jantin 19:10, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Or at least, survey some established users to see how their motives and activities differ from new joiners. Crowston

There are a number of existing interview and survey studies about the motivations and activities established Wikipedians and a few that deal with the transition from new to established. We hope to add to those studies by combining repeated survey data over time with a detailed analysis of editing activity. -- Jantin 16:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Coye and the rest of the team for setting up the project and sharing these info. To me, the project seems good and well-though particularly in terms of how it could contribute to provide better understanding to the community about how community works and contribute to the community improvements. Congrats!. I think it would be good to provide a bit more info on how do you intend to recruit subjects and the ways you plan to spread research results in order that the community could access to it (some possible diverse do a presentation at next Wikimania, send around an executive report or a link to an open acces article, etc.). Thanks and congrats again. Cheers! Mayo

Hey Mayo! Thanks for these excellent suggestions. We have updated the project page with additional details about recruitment as well as our plans for sharing our findings with the community. Jantin 19:10, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Controls

Hi, interesting project, I look forward to seeing the results. Have you considered the possibility that the process of measuring this could actually alter what you are measuring, especially if one of the drivers of editor retention is interaction. I would be interested to see how the editors in this study compare to a control sample in terms of continued editing activity. WereSpielChequers 17:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Did the results of this ever get published anywhere?--Kudpung 22:29, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Check out the latest issue of the research newsletter --DarTar 18:43, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Did that, but the simple answer is that Wikipedia Progression of Participation does not come up with a simple, useful answer. The individual reports on ethnographic distribution of editors, and contibutions to diverse encycolpedic topics are an interesting read, but unfortunately, as the cut-off date for much of the reseach appears to have been 2007, I can't use the data, and we don't have a clear indication of recent trends over the most important period t Mid 2008 through mid 2011.

This data is needed to reflect and corroborate the idea - that is widely believed - that it is mainly the poor and sometimes hostile reception by other editors that is driving new editors away and/or discouraging potential new editors from staying with the project, and not the saturation of encyclopedic topics.

I don't sere any data regarding a shift from the traditional encyclopedic articles, to spam, vanity pages, bands, and borderline notable bios of spots people.

It's possible of course that all this research has been done by another group and is available in another place. If so, does anyone know where it is, and could they point me to it please? What is needed are clear tables, and overlapping graphs. --Kudpung 01:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)