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.
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.reply
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 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 deterioration
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 its 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?
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?
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.
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;....
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.
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.reply
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 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 deterioration
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 its 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?
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?
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.
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;....