Wikipedia talk:Statistics Department

I'm interested in statistics that would help one understand the social aspects of wiki usage, for example, group dynamics that made Wikipedia a success and other wiki projects a failure.

Currently, there are too many research questions. There's a lack of focus. So a few suggestions/questions:

1. How about focussing on a key question?
2. How about moving questions of lesser importance into a KIV page?
3. Who can help us collect the necessary data?

key question

From the Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects, which ones are doing the best in terms of:

1. activity: participants, discussions, etc.
2. quantity of articles created/improved
3. progress toward meeting goals
4. overal value of work products
5. other factors comprising usefullness

• How can these be measured?
• What data can be looked at?
• What metrics can be used?

data collection

An idea for collecting data by parsing the Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects can be seen if you look closely at Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral. It has been suggested that one should join the realtime chat network for wikiprojects at freenode: #wikiproject. Note that this is a long-term experimental process, so please be patient and open-minded.