Contributing to the largest online encyclopedia is not as simple as it appears: it involves a gamut of activities from writing new articles to writing policies and guidelines to participating in the deletion process. But when participants in our survey of Wikipedia editors were asked how often they contributed to certain activities in the last one month, the top three activities they named most frequently as those to which they contribute very often/often are in the article namespace: fix formatting, spelling, grammar or make other minor edits (50 percent), add content to existing articles (48 percent) and write new articles (23 percent).

Being a Wikipedian is not only about adding content to Wikipedia. Many Wikipedians work behind the scenes to ensure content on Wikipedia is of high quality and meets the standards of Wikipedia. More than one-fifth of editors (21 percent) patrol for vandalism, copyright violations or other problems with articles often/very often. A slightly smaller number (17 percent) participates in the discussion namespace often/very often, and nine percent participate in the deletion process including speedy and proposed deletion often/very often. Other popular activities include: doing translation work and uploading or editing images, media etc. (14 percent each).

Q4a,4b: How often have you participated in the following in the last 30 days? (n=6348)

With 3.9 million articles in March 2012, the English Wikipedia is one of the more mature and complete language Wikipedias. It’s no surprise that editors who edit other language Wikipedias are more likely to say that they write new articles or add content to existing articles often/very often. Editors who work on smaller Wikipedias are also more likely to do translation work. Compared to the English (4 percent) and German Wikipedia (5 percent), more editors from the Russian (18 percent), Spanish (28 percent), French (16 percent), Portuguese (35 percent) and Arabic (36 percent) Wikipedias stated that they did translation work often/very often.

Q4a,4b: How often have you participated in the following in the last 30 days? (n=6348)

If you are interested in more information about Wikipedia editors like age or country of residence, please check out the long-awaited topline findings from the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research
Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

In December 2011, we conducted an online survey of Wikipedia editors in 17 languages. This is the second in a series of blog posts summarizing our findings. If you are interested, you can find out more about the methodology of the survey here.

When University of Alberta-Augustana Psychology Professor Paula Marentette thought about Wikipedia, it was in the context of reminding her students not to cite it in a paper. But then she read Association for Psychological Science President Mahzarin Banaji’s call for psychology professionals to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles on their discipline. The arguments compelled Dr. Marentette to assign her students to edit Wikipedia as part of their coursework, and this term she joined the Wikipedia Education Program in Canada with her Language Acquisition class. The upper-level seminar class had seven students, and Dr. Marentette thought it would be good to have students work jointly to improve two course-related articles: vocabulary development and joint attention, with the goal of bringing them both up to Good Article status.

Some members of the Language Acquisition seminar at the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta.

The students in the class found this writing assignment a bit scary, but they were curious and eager to see how it could turn out.

“I was nervous about writing for Wikipedia because I didn’t know what to expect and the process seemed a little daunting,” said Alanna Lindsay, a fourth-year student from Wainwright, Alberta. “However, once we began, I quickly got used to Wikipedia and began to really enjoy the project.”

Alanna’s classmate Erika Heiberg, a fourth-year from Kingman, Alberta, agreed, saying she was “slightly intimidated” at the beginning.

“I was unfamiliar with the editing process and was overwhelmed at first by all the new interfaces and things like that, but I was excited to do something different,” said Heiberg.

Dr. Marentette said the traditional research essay generally develops information literacy, critical thinking, and writing skills, but she appreciated the fact that the Wikipedia assignment addressed those and more.

“The students learned a lot about evaluating sources. They learned how Wikipedia works (talk pages, standards etc.). They know now that they can figure out if an article is of reliable or not. It made the typical lesson about evaluating sources very relevant,” she said. “When writing, they need to constantly be aware of the potential audience. They have to address public response as soon as they begin to plan changes to an article. They have to defend their choices, or allow themselves to be persuaded to change their approach. They have to write and rewrite to achieve the tone and clarity and coverage for which they are aiming.”

And her students noticed their skills blossoming as they worked together to improve the two articles.

“The good thing about Wikipedia is that it teaches you to write in a more accessible manner and to leave out a lot of the unnecessary information that you include in a traditional paper to meet the page number requirement,” Heiberg said. ”This project helped me to make my writing much more succinct and easy to follow.”

The students improved their articles, then reached out to their Online Ambassador, Neelix, members of WikiProject Psychology and other editors who contribute to psychology-related articles for feedback. When they felt ready, they submitted both articles to the Good Article review process, then collaborated to make edits based on the feedback of the reviewers. Students said they welcomed the productive feedback on their articles, and they were excited to have had their hard work recognized with the Good Article designation.

All of the students said they preferred Wikipedia assignments to traditional assignments after this experience. In fact, third-year student Lianne Theelen, a native of Red Deer, Alberta, said she hoped to take another class next year where she writes Wikipedia articles for class.

“We get more feedback on our writing and we’re more motivated to make it look good because it’s accessible to the public,” Theelen said. “My favorite part is not having it sit and collect dust or get thrown away after the term. Our article is still there, and it is useful for people.”

Other classmates agreed, echoing the themes that drove APS to call on professors like Dr. Marentette to use Wikipedia in their classrooms in the first place.

“In the future, I would prefer a Wikipedia assignment over a usual term paper, since this will help many Wikipedia users get credible information on psychology related topics,” said Juliet Brown, a fourth-year student born in Ghana and now living in Alberta.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia was knowing that the information being presented is valuable to someone, and in particular to parents,” said Alison Owens, a third-year student from Olds, Alberta. “The joint attention page may be a place where parents of children with developmental disabilities go to look in order to learn more about their child’s disability. I think its great that we can provide that information for them in an easy access format, with reliable sources that they can trust.”

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

WikiCup image

Wikipedia editors are hardworking volunteers who have created the most extraordinary knowledge resource in history. Many contributors have made tens of thousands of edits. Some have made hundreds of thousands. But sometimes, even the most seasoned editor could do with a bit of motivation.

The WikiCup is one such source of motivation, a friendly editing competition developed by the volunteer community with the goal to improve content and make editing more fun.

The Cup runs annually from January to October, with five rounds of elimination. Points are awarded each round for contributing different types of content, including Featured Articles (FAs), Good Articles (GAs), Did You Know’s (DYKs) and Featured Lists, among other article quality categories. Administration of the event is handled by judges, who also resolve disputes and review talk page discussions. This year’s judges are Josh Milburn (User:J Milburn) and Eddie Erhart (User:The ed17), both of whom started judging in 2009.

While a lot of WikiCup contestants are already prolific editors, Erhart believes the competition is still very effective in driving content creation. “[I enjoy] seeing these editors go out and add boatloads of content to the encyclopedia,” he said. “Many would have been doing this anyway, but the Cup provides an incentive for them to do more. I think the idea of a competition is a strong motivating factor to go out and improve content.”

In this year’s WikiCup, Stefano Magliocco (User:Grapple X) led the first two rounds mostly thanks to his GAs about The X-Files and Millenium television series. He says he initially entered the Cup as a means to keep himself motivated. “I had a lot of stuff planned, but I usually find myself losing focus on things over time,” said Magliocco. “I’ve been doing a lot of work for The X-Files WikiProject, and I had planned out a lot of long-term projects. The Cup seemed like a good means of lighting a fire under my arse to get these done.”

Since Magliocco has entered the Cup, he has noticed an increase in not only the quantity, but also the quality of his contributions. “I’ve generally had a strong burst of activity at the start of each round, where my normal work rate doubles or triples,” he said. “From there, it’s really just a case of the Cup motivating me to edit better, rather than more.”

Magliocco feels that encouraging the creation of GAs is one of the main ways the WikiCup accomplishes its stated mission of improving content on Wikipedia. “I think the level of investment versus reward given for the promotion of GAs has definitely helped the project as a whole,” said Magliocco, who likes to keep track of the ratio of GAs to total articles. “At the minute, about 1 in 275 articles are of GA status, whereas it was 1 in 280 at the start of the Cup.”

Last year’s WikiCup winner, Andrew Hink (User:Hurricanehink), agreed that increasing the number of GAs is an important step in improving the quality of Wikipedia. “I think [having 500,000 GAs] is very much in the realm of possibility in the next 10 years,” he said. “As long as it’s all well-cited, all well-written, that’s a good goal to have, and it’s very doable.”

(more…)

As part of the Wikimedia Movement strategic plan, regular surveys among Wikipedia editors are an important way to take the pulse of the community and identify pressing concerns and needs. We are happy to share results from the second editor survey that was conducted in December 2011. We began survey efforts in April 2011, and results from the first survey are available here. We would like to point out that although this blog post and the following ones will be looking at some trends across the April and December survey, 7-8 months is a rather short time to see statistically significant change on important indicators like gender distribution resulting from Wikimedia Foundation initiatives. Here are some demographic data about Wikipedia editors:

a. Wikipedia editors continue to be predominantly men

The gender distribution of Wikipedia editors hasn’t changed since the last survey. Among those surveyed, 90 percent self-identified as males, 9 percent as females and 1 percent as transsexual or transgender. That being said, there was a greater amount of female editors among those respondents who had joined more recently: Among editors who had joined in 2011, 14 percent were female compared to 10 percent for 2010, 9 percent for 2009 and 8 percent for editors who had joined in 2008 and participated in this survey. Possible explanations include that Wikipedia has been attracting a higher ratio of women recently, or that female editors leave the project sooner. There were no significant variations across the major language Wikipedias, with the exception of the Russian Wikipedia, which reported only 6 percent female editors. Also, out of all editors in the US, 15 percent are women, which is significantly higher than any other country of residence. Conversely, there are fewer male editors in US (85 percent) compared to other countries (UK, India, Brazil, Canada) where 90 percent or more of editors are males.  With initiatives like the Teahouse project that engages new editors through outreach, we hope to increase the number of female editors on Wikipedia.

(D15) What is your gender? (n=6503)

D15. What is your gender? n=6503

b. English Wikipedia continues to be the most read and edited Wikipedia

(more…)

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce a new opportunity for Wikipedians to reach out to scholars at one of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions. We’re seeking an experienced Wikipedia editor for a one year, full time fellowship based at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Located at the Harvard campus in Cambridge Massachusetts, this Wikipedian will have a unique role facilitating collaboration between the faculty, staff, and fellows at the Center and the Wikipedia volunteer community, with the aim of improving the quality of encyclopedia articles.

The Belfer Center is a focal point for research on international security and policy related to science, technology and the environment. It is also part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. While some experience with the subject matter is preferred, the goal of this fellowship is for a Wikipedian to help unlock the expertise at the Center and see that it is shared with the world. While English Wikipedia alone may have nearly four million articles, the depth and quality of our coverage of international affairs and policy — such as on global nuclear security — is not well known. What we do know is that we are still a long way from Wikipedia’s goal of the “sum of all human knowledge,” and that having a liaison to work with experts and volunteers will do much to improve the free encyclopedia.

This position is funded by a generous grant from the Stanton Foundation. This philanthropic institution has supported both the Belfer Center and the Wikimedia Foundation in the past. Apply now!

Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships Program, Wikimedia Foundation

Every year, hundreds of Wikimedians descend upon a single city for an annual international conference: Wikimania. Its hackathon and presentation days are filled with workshops and discussions around Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects, the open source MediaWiki software, and free knowledge/content. The forum provides excellent opportunities for socialization and idea dissemination between Wikimedia groups from around the world.

It is imperative that a diverse, representative group is enabled to attend the conference, representing a variety of cultures, languages, and projects. To that end, the Wikimedia Foundation and some Wikimedia chapters offer a limited number of scholarships with the goal of making Wikimania a productive conference by enabling the attendance of a diverse group of participants in the Wikimedia movement.

As the movement continues to grow and expand around the world, it is unfortunately impossible to fund the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have contributed, but each year we strive to support a select few who we think will both greatly benefit from the conference and contribute to the conference. A “Scholarship Review Committee” — entirely consisting of community volunteers — reviews a large number of scholarship applicants (over a thousand this time), scoring applicants on their activity in the Wikimedia projects and other compatible movements as well as their potential for future contributions in the Wikimedia movement. WMF looks at the recommendations of the committee and accounts for the diversity of the pool of candidates in order to support a diverse group of representatives from countries around the world, allocating more scholarships to global south regions, editors in smaller language projects, and women.

This year, we are pleased to announce that scholarships have been awarded to 130 individuals from 57 countries! We were able to sponsor so many people with the help of Wikimédia France, who also contributed directly to the general funds for scholarships. These representatives contribute to a variety of projects and will bring both old and fresh experiences into the conference.  Scholarships this year were awarded by region in an effort to ensure that we would have good representation from different countries. Partial scholarships were distributed based on the applicants’ indication of whether or not they could pay, and funds were distributed via partial scholarships where possible in order for the most people to attend. So for example, though North Americans make up 13% of the total scholarship recipients, they represent only 5% of the total anticipated funding because about 65% of those spots were only partial scholarships.

As always, the field was incredibly competitive, with 1113 applicants from 118 countries. The overall acceptance rate of applicants for the WMF scholarships was 12%, with Europe as the lowest at 8%. Note that the low acceptance from Europe was intentional, as a series of Chapter-funded scholarships for Europeans are about to be announced which will boost the participation numbers from this region.

While we are excited about the input our 130 scholars will provide this year to the conference, we wish that all the other excellent contributors who applied would be able to attend. The scholarships are in no way a direct reflection on one’s value in the community -it is a result of a very competitive process, where many deserving community members are unable to be funded for this year. We greatly value the participation of all in the Wikimedia projects and sincerely hope that all applicants will continue to participate in both local and worldwide conversations online outside of this event!

Jessie Wild, Liaison with the Scholarship Review Committee

Skull from a tomb dating to the Mesolithic period. Photo by Didier Descouens

Wikimedia Commons photographer Didier Descouens (User:Archaeodontosaurus) has the unique opportunity to take photos of natural history and paleontology: he is the chair of the Institute of Natural Sciences “Picot de Lapeyrouse” at the Natural History Museum in Toulouse, France. As part of a special arrangement with Wikimedia France and Toulouse Mayor Pierre Cohen, Descouens and his colleagues have spent a year adding quality encyclopedic images to the Commons database as part of Projet Phoebus.

The skull above was part of a famous tomb, from the Téviec region in Brittany, and is dated to approximately 7000 BC, during the Mesolithic era. According to Descouens, the tomb has undergone a complete restoration with a study of paleoanthropology and forensic medicine and is part of an exhibition that originally appeared in Toulouse, but is currently in Paris. The exhibition will then move to the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, South Africa.

Descouens said there were two skeletons in the tomb, which were originally believed to be of a man and a woman. Through their analysis, they discovered that they were both women and that they had been violently killed. “The skull of the photo shows an impact of arrow, above the right orbital,” said Descouens. “The right side of the skull shows a blow with a hammer.”

As for the significance of the finding, Descouens said, “The image of two women murdered and buried with great care, asks us about our inner nature. 7000 years: that is both far away but frighteningly ‘modern.’”

Didier Descouens self portrait.

Descouens is a doctor, a scientific photographer and a naturalist. He has been taking photographs since he was 10 years old and learned scientific photography techniques from François Seguy, who is in charge of photographic works from the Muséum de Toulouse and Université Paul Sabatier. The Muséum de Toulouse has mandated that the ”Institute Piot de Lapeyrouse” share photographs from its collections freely. After testing various options, they found Commons to be the most reliable and easiest to use.

In addition to the value of the photos for Wikipedia and Commons, Descouens said scientific organizations have repurposed the images for their materials. The Projet Phoebus images have been used on 283 of the Wikipedia language projects and have also appeared in media stories throughout Europe and in Canada.

The ubiquitous use of the photos pleases Descouens. “Knowledge is the cement that unites us. It is valuable if it is freely shared by all,” he said.

(View more of Descouens’ featured photos)

Story by Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager
Reporting by Elaine Mao, Communications Intern
Translation by Guillaume Paumier, Technical Communications Manager 

Kristen Skogen Lund, Crown Prince Haakon, Jimmy Wales, and Minister of Development Holmas looking on as Wikipedians demonstrate editing.

On Monday, at the annual Wikipedia Academy in Oslo, Norway, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway joined with Wikimedians to promote free knowledge and to highlight the cultural institutions and businesses that have embraced Wikipedia. They focused on the Wikipedia Zero agreement between the Wikimedia Foundation and Telenor, which enables more than 135 million customers in Asia to access Wikipedia without any additional charge on their data plans.

The celebration was headed by local Wikipedians, who introduced Crown Prince Haakon, Jimmy Wales, Minister of Development Heikki Holmas, and Telenor Executive Vice President Kristin Skogen Lund. Lund opened the celebration by advocating for Wikipedia and its open source format, identifying it as the “main pillar” of Telenor’s policy of openness in Asia.

“It’s an important development we put on track together with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedia movement, and we are proud to contribute to this,” said Lund

Lund then demonstrated Telenor’s commitment to the free knowledge mission by announcing that Telenor had contributed 200 photos to Wikimedia Commons with Creative Commons licensing. “There is so much work to be done globally, but we can also contribute at home,” she said. “We hope that others will do the same.”

The academy broke past participation records by attracting 99 sign-ups and 23 high school assistants, as well as the first ever royal participant. Half of the attendees belonged to GLAM institutions, mainly museums and archives. It marked the beginning of the sector’s national policy of officially acclaiming Wikipedia as a preferred channel of communicating cultural heritage.

Minister Holmas, Crown Prince Haakon, and Jimmy Wales

The 100 chairs of the academy room were all filled up, with people standing along the walls during the award ceremony for Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 and the local Wikipedian of the Year. The latter prize went to meteorologist Frode Korneliussen and the Catholic parish priest Claes Tande, who has 180,000 edits and more than 13,000 new articles.

During a course on how to edit Wikipedia, we learned that Minister Holmaas is an active Wikipedia user, and editor. Ten Wikipedia editors from the local Drömtorp High School were recruited to help teach the course. The students, with assistance from Wales, taught Crown Prince Haakon, Lund and Holmaas how to patrol, supervise RSS feeds, and recognize vandalism. The Crown Prince followed the lectures intensely and expressed admiration for the elaborate tools that administrators and patrollers use on Wikipedia.

This year’s academy coincided with the last day of the trial of Utøya terrorist Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo City court house, only a kilometer away. In the local media’s coverage of the academy, they focused on the efforts of the Norwegian Wikipedia community to keep extremists from making their imprint on articles. Jimmy Wales explained the Wikipedia model as one of openness and democratic debate, which helps the project attain a neutral point of view.

The morning after, Wikimedia Norway vice chairman Erlend Bjørtvedt appeared on the morning news, explaining how a corps of 150 norwegian patrollers and administrators on four continents, have managed to uphold the neutrality of disputed articles by a mix of patrolling, reverting and limited article blocking.

Erlend Bjørtvedt, Vice Chairman, Wikimedia Norway 

(This is the first in a series of profiles of editors who we have recently thanked for reaching their 1,000th edit to articles on English Wikipedia.)

Kawah Putih Lake in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. (Image courtesy user Amelia guo, cc-by-sa-3.0)

Indonesia is the third largest developing country (behind China and India) and the fourth most populous country in the world – but many English-speaking people don’t know that, or anything about the country itself. This is in part because, according to Wikipedia editor Peter McCawley, Indonesia “does not explain itself to the outside world very well.” He believes that many Indonesians don’t feel comfortable contributing to the English Wikipedia, and the few articles that do exist are still too short or have gaps that should be filled. That’s what Peter is trying to change.

Peter was born in Australia but got interested in Indonesia in the 1970s. In 1972, he completed his PhD on Indonesian economics and now works as an economic adviser in Indonesia. He also volunteers for an Australian NGO that promotes the development of very poor areas in the country. He started editing Wikipedia in 2010 because he saw gaps in information that, with his expertise, could fill in.

“When I see useful text that seems to need improvement, I’m inclined to see if I can edit it a little,” he said.

“Wikipedia is an important source of information for many people. Good information is a public good. Part of my job as a university scholar and teacher is to contribute to information in areas where I have expertise,” Peter said when asked why he contributes to Wikipedia. “Further, I have personally benefitted greatly myself from the global public good that is ‘information and learning.’ I have, in a broad sense, a debt to the world of information and learning. I should repay my debt!”

Peter has improved and expanded many articles on Indonesian people, places, organizations. He has also created two new articles: Widjojo Nitisastro, an Indonesian economist, and Kawah Putih (pictured above), a volcanic crater lake on the island of Java. Other volunteer editors have come along and expanded those articles even further, adding references, copyediting, and bringing in images from Wikimedia Commons.

“It’s important to add to information on Wikipedia because lots of key people (scholars, policy makers, students, journalists, and so on) look for information on the web, and they often look at Wikipedia. It’s a pity when the information on Wikipedia is wrong or incomplete or poorly presented,” said Peter. “The world in general is likely to be a better place in all sorts of ways if people are well-informed.”

Indonesia isn’t just a place for Peter. “Indonesia is fascinating in just about every way that one might mention – society, politics, culture, economics, religion, environment, international relations, and so on,” he said. “Across the world today, around five billion people or more have decided that they don’t want to be poor any more – they want to have decent standards of living, and they want their countries to grow and to modernize. For me, Indonesia is a prism onto this remarkable change in human life on the planet. And if I can explain just a little of all of this on Wikipedia, that seems to me to be a useful thing to do.”

To get involved in improving Indonesia-related content on English Wikipedia, please visit WikiProject Indonesia, or browse all articles on Indonesia and pitch in where you can.

Maryana Pinchuk, Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation