Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia

This project, Wikidemia, provides a space for articles related to academic research about Wikipedia. Related pages include the Statistics Department, m:Research, and m:Statistics. This page and project are still very preliminary and will benefit from your contributions and insight. If you would like to help, please sign the Participants list below and introduce yourself on the talk page. The to-do list here is just a start...

Title

WikiProject on Wikidemia

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to design, implement, and discuss academic research about Wikipedia. We seek to better understand what promotes or circumscribes Wikipedia's success and why. We also seek to explore and rigorously evaluate new strategies for improving Wikipedia, and to archive research attempted by Wikipedians into related topics.

Descendant WikiProjects

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies

Members

Please add your name here!

• +sj + 19:36, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Computerjoe 15:51, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Tobacman 04:56, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Cormaggio(Cormac Lawler) 15 Dec 2004
• Amelia Hunt 21:50, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Angela. 09:19, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
• AaronSw 20:04, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Francis Schonken 09:15, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Fuzheado | Talk 06:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Leyanese 19:38, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Mr. Ballard 02:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Sundar (talk · contribs) 06:45, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
• illWill 22:20, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
• Quinobi 18:51, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 18:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
• Mark Elliott 10:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Martin Mai 10:48, 01 November 2005 (UTC)
• Bryan 08:32, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
• Episcopo 17:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
• ∴ here…♠ 22:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• Trondtr 08:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
• Covington 05:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
• Erik Garrison 23:14, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
• Reswik 04:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
• Vulpeto 11:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
• User:Debbe 11:43 PM 6 October 2006
• Karibou 13:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
• --A. B. 20:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• --Saidkassem 18:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• User: Amitorit
• DGG 22:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
• Hector Zenil 14:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• fnielsen 15:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Andrew Stephen 12:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• +A.0u 05:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• TeaDrinker 20:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Laleena^{Talk to me} _{Contributions to Wikipedia} 00:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
• Æþeling — 05:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
• GumbyProf: "I'm about ideas, but I'm not always about good ideas." 00:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
• Pete (talk) 04:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC) (Interested in presenting Wikipedia to the rest of the world, promoting wiki-based collaboration, etc., and seeking relevant data and stories.
• Awadewit Awadewit | talk 15:49, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Filll (talk) 00:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
• Witty Lama 13:56, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
• Leafman (talk) 01:16, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
• Bestchai (talk) 01:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Studies

Completed Studies

• Wikipedia in academic studies
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia/Use of referencing and assessment - A brief survey of reference use in random articles.

Data

• See Wikipedia:Statistics

Ongoing Studies

for Proposed Studies, see the Research Questions lists below; all content at /Studies has been incorporated into specific study pages.

• Evaluations of changes in Wikipedia policies.
• What encourages initial contribution?

  What encourages retention and return? (for a separate study...)

• What encourages donations? Donation details, feedback, and variation.

  Much data can be collected, and many metrics, to evaluate this question; to date no structured experiments or analyses have been done. See also this analysis of WMF fundraising drives, and these proposals for ways to evaluate potential fundraising techniques.

• Visualizations : History Flow (I and II), &c.
• Wikipedia Quant Project: Quantitative and statistical analysis of Wikipedia content, community behavior, and policy change, to be performed on a new, multipurpose statistics server widely accessible to client researchers.
• Use in primary education : how is Wikipedia used in primary schools, as source or knowledge, as introduction to collaboration, as space for contributing local knowledge? Ditto for Wikimedia Commons.

Issues : How to identify classes of cases/user; what variations to impose (and how to implement them); then how to choose randomly among them to implement variation[s]; finally what data to collect [both primary and secondary metrics].

Research Questions

Promoting Contribution

• Who contributes to Wikipedia? (demographics/ education / other volunteerism and community involvement)
• How does feedback to contributors affect subsequent propensities to contribute?
• What interventions can increase the quantity and quality of Wikipedia articles?
• What makes contributors mad? stressed?
• What makes contributors happy?
• What is the effect of contributors' emotional reactions on their contributions?
• What role do watchlists play in encouraging contributions and edit wars?
• What is the effect of placing an article on the Main Page as a featured article on readership and contributions?
• What steps are needed to secure accreditation on articles? Should there be any?

Promoting Readership/Consumption

• Who reads Wikipedia articles?
• How well known is Wikipedia amongst the general population in various places around the world?
• What interventions can successfully publicize Wikipedia to larger audiences?
• Enhancing web usability, see for instance: Wikipedia:Easy navigation, Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability
• Promotion of Wikipedia and other MediaWiki projects at Meta

Curtailing mischief

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies

• How can disputes (eg, edit wars) be resolved more efficiently?
• How can vandalism be decreased or fixed more quickly?
• What categories does vandalism fall into, and how much of total vandalism does each category (e.g. advertising) represent?
• How long does vandalism typically remain visible before it is removed - statistical analysis needed. See for example Wikipedia talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis
• How effective are bots in helping deal with mischief? What strategies can we use to further their effectiveness?
• Who typically reverts vandalism? (figures for admins, regular editors, IP editors, bots)
• What effects does semi-protection have on levels of contribution and vandalism? Several articles should be studied before protection, during and after.
  • What level of vandalism is acceptable; at what point is protection warranted?

Article quality

• How can our best articles be kept in pristine condition?
  • What policies and initiatives can we enact to prevent article deteriation
  • A case study of 'edit creep' is needed
• What is the average quality of our articles?
• Is the average quality improving? Does a typical article improve over it's lifespan? How quickly? What trends do we see?
• How can our article assessment system be improved?
• What percentage of articles cite no references at all?

Networking

• How (much) are the pages linked together? (Paths, Meshing)
• Which pages are visited together? How close are they in matter of content?
• How important is #wikipedia to the administration of Wikipedia?
• ...

Coherence and consistency

• How to promote coherence and consistency of Wikipedia guidelines, without hampering the freedom associated with Wikipedia's methods? discuss
• Can WikiProjects be coordinated with Portals and Categories in a comprehensive way from a more logical focus to help align Wikipedia - The Community with Wikipedia the encyclopedia? discuss
• ...

Collaboration

• How does collaboration in wikipedia differ/contrast, complement &/or extend more traditional forms of textual collaboration?
• Can lessons learned about wikipedia collaboration collaboration shed light on other forms of (online) collaboration?
• Do Wikipedians exhibit a hightened sense of community over other Internet communities? Why? Why not?

Methodology

• Many different methodologies would be possible and useful.
• Some questions can be examined by direct analysis of existing field data.
• Running randomized evaluations will facilitate drawing causal inferences about results. A standard way to pre-test possible large-scale innovations in a neutral way is to identify a class of visitors, editors, or pages; select a randomized subset of that class; and introduce a variation to the randomized subset. Then metrics can be evaluated for both the subset and the entire class, and inferences drawn about what effects the variation had. Stratification can increase the statistical power of the evaluation.
• A user survey to which one could add important questions, would help inform background assumptions. Users who do not choose to be wholly anonymous in responding to such a survey could even partake in specialized control groups for some studies.
• Pilot studies - running small, short initial studies to provide an example of how to run and evaluate a study; and to iron out implementation details specific to Wikipedia and its community.

Anecdotal success stories

Where has Wikipedia excelled at providing accurate information? or at drawing in new volunteers? Share your stories here! (See also WP:WPOR and http://www.aboutus.org/Wiki_success_stories )

• Barlow Road: During a WikiProject Oregon Collaboration of the Week, Wikipedia editors noted that several historic sources said that Sam Barlow's party went over Lolo Pass during their 1845 trip across the Cascades. This claim does not jive with the geography of the region and other details of the trip. From a careful reading of Palmer's journals, editors discovered where the misunderstanding originated, and wrote up a more accurate account of the journey.
• Mary Ramsey Wood: This Oregon pioneer is reputed to have lived to 120 years of age, in many supposedly authoritative sources. Partially on this basis, she was named the "Queen Mother of Oregon" by the Oregon Legislature. Wikipedia editors searched the census records of 1880 and 1890, and determined that she was in fact no older than 97 when she died.
• List of Oregon ballot measures: The Oregon Secretary of State maintains historic information about ballot measures, but it is not as useful as it could be; the complete list contains no hyperlinks to detailed information about the measures, or other relevant information. Wikipedia has a better version. (Note: this is a work in progress, and is not yet very complete before 1989.)
• William Pope McArthur: One editor created an article on a historical figure, William Pope McArthur. Within a few hours a "domino effect" of collaboration among several editors from different states led to the creation and expansion of several articles. See User talk:Katr67.

Caveats?

• Privacy
• Consent to participate
• Interventions may have unpredictable results
• Randomization may be difficult to sustain

General strategy and context

Research on Wikipedia links naturally to topics currently under study in economics, psychology, and sociology. Specifically, focus is needed on:

• Improving content of related articles :

  Experiment (needs a lot of work!), Control experiment, Field experiment

  Randomized trial, Double-blind study

• Research already going on (other wikiprojects, etc) in the realm of web usability and Wikipedia as a web interface.

Economists study markets in ideas; volunteerism; bargaining; and information. Psychologists study motivation; conflict resolution;.... Sociologists study networks of ideas and people; the culture of organizations; norms of behavior;....