Last Saturday, Maryana Pinchuk and I had the pleasure of hosting the first San Francisco meetup of Wikimedians in 2012. The Wikimedia community hosts meetups for Wikipedians and editors of our other projects all around the world. Thankfully these self-organized meetups are usually regular enough that they don’t require a blog post to herald their occurrence. But considering the rarity of a bonafide San Francisco meetup that includes community members, the Board of Trustees, and staff, we’d like to share a short recap of the event:

• We had a fantastic turnout! With about 40 attendees, Saturday was one of the largest San Francisco meetups ever, other than the 10th Anniversary’s “West Coast WikiCon” and our recent San Francisco Hackathon. (We’d particularly like to thank Wikimedia Foundation Community Department colleagues Karyn Gladstone, Siko Bouterse, and Bryony Jones for their organizational help!)
• Many of the attendees were community members (about 20 folks), but we also included the Board of Trustees and several staff from the Tech and Community Departments.
• We were thrilled to have not just English Wikipedians, but editors of Wiktionary, Wikisource, as well as Portuguese and German Wikipedia. The San Francisco Bay Area is known for having a diverse community with a huge range of interests, so we hope future meetups can continue to include people from many Wikimedia projects.

Though the Northern California community, including the Wikimedia Foundation, has periodically held great large-scale events, such as conferences and hackathons, the success of Saturday’s meetup encourages us to hold more regular, open-format meetups in the near future. Let us know if you’d like to get involved!

Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation

This March, the Community Department will be heading to Brazil to talk with supporters of Wikimedia’s mission. Our aim is to better understand how Portuguese-speaking editors and donors, many of whom are located in Brazil, view Wikipedia and the projects, in order to better tailor the fundraiser and all our programs to them.

First up, Maryana Pinchuk and I will be holding four meetups with active editors, in order to talk with them about what makes Portuguese Wikipedia unique. They are in…

• Rio de Janeiro
• São Paulo
• Curitiba
• Natal

Our colleagues in Global Development and at Wikimedia Brasil are working hard on several initiatives to reach out to new editors in the country. The Wikimedia Engineering team also has a number of large scale projects, such as the Visual Editor, that will deeply impact Portuguese Wikipedia.

The purpose of our visit is to gain a deeper understanding of the Brazilian Wikipedian community and to start a dialog with them about improvements they would like to see in Portuguese Wikipedia – something that we hope can be of assistance to everyone here at the Foundation. (To that end, Wikimedia Storyteller Victor Grigas will also be at the meetups, in order to interview interested Wikimedians one-on-one about the project and their perspective on it.)

In addition to editor meetups, Megan Hernandez will also be holding several donor focus groups in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Last year’s fundraising vastly improved on our ability to support donations from around the globe, but we still have work to do to optimize the localization and donor experience for readers in different countries.

If you’re an editor interested in joining, there’s still plenty of time to sign up for the meetup near you. We’ll be reporting back on our visit and discussions with the community, so look for a follow-up post come mid-March.

Obrigado!

Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation

For the last three months, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Department has been busy with our inaugural summer research program. Today, we are happy to share our summary of findings.

We invited eight academics from a variety of fields to join us from June through August, in order to take an intensive look at the dynamics of Wikipedia’s editing community. We organized our work this summer as a series of weekly sprints, each tackling a new topic related to participation in Wikipedia by editors. In particular, we focused on the spectrum of participation related to new editors of Wikipedia, from the time they register to how they first contribute and collaborate with existing community members.

The past months have been a fun, rewarding collaboration with Foundation staff and fellows, community members, and our friends from the academic world who joined us. We hope that our conclusions, as well as the underlying data and open source tools used to produce them, will give the entire Wikimedia movement greater insight into how the volunteer editing community functions and can be better supported. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the researchers who participated in this summer and who worked hard to make it a success.

Our summary of findings is organized topically, but you can see the complete list of individual research sprints, links to media, and other information on our main documentation page on Meta. If you have questions or comments about our findings or the documentation for individual projects, please feel free to make use of the related Talk pages.

Diederik van Liere, Maryana Pinchuk, Steven Walling,
Community Department

P.S. The research team also had the pleasure of presenting their findings to Foundation staff in San Francisco in late August. Below are a few snapshots of that event we’d like to share. These and more from the summer are available on Wikimedia Commons.

The first month of the summer research program in the Wikimedia Foundation has passed, and we’d like to share a quick update on the continuing work of our eight researchers in the Community Department, as well as some snapshots of what it’s like to be here at the Foundation during their time with us.

As our announcement described, the Wikimedia Summer of Research is a relatively short but intensive study of the Wikipedia editor community. We’re using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, from large scale measurement via tools such as Apache Hadoop, to rhetorical analysis of widely-used templates. Most of our research questions focus on editors who have made between one and 100 edits (i.e. newbies).

Though our work is still very much in progress, our public documentation can be seen on Meta. The two dozen sprints so far could all use comments and questions from fellow wiki researchers and community members. Think of them as a rough draft that needs your help in polishing.

Beyond the particulars of our first weeks of collaboration, we wanted to share a photographic look at interdisciplinary research in action at the Wikimedia Foundation this summer. The following snapshots are of our recent planning day. Enjoy!

Steven Walling, Wikimedia Fellow,
on behalf of the Community Department research group

Last month we presented findings from an experimental qualitative analysis of the first edits by new contributors to English Wikipedia in 2004 and 2011. Assessing these edits, we discovered that the majority of initial contributions in both of those years were of acceptable quality according to Wikipedia standards.

But we did not extend that study over all years, and we didn’t look at the complete contribution history of each new crop of editors to see if they edited in good faith overall. In the past week we’ve done exactly that.

Our randomized sample is of about 150-200 new editors to the English Wikipedia each year, sampled from February. As you can see, a clear majority of new editors in the sample participated in good faith. The good faith participation reached its lowest proportion in the sample at a little over 66%.

Note that “good faith” does not refer to whether edits were very high quality, only that editors did not act in clear, intentional disregard for the pillars of Wikipedia. Another practical note: identifying when an account is a duplicate made by a previous editor (i.e. a sockpuppet) is quite difficult, so for our analysis only editors blocked specifically for abusing multiple accounts were counted as such.

We also calculated a projected amount of editors who would fall into each of these categories, based on the comprehensive number of new editors each February from stats.wikimedia.org. The chart below represents these projected total numbers.

If our samples are correctly representative of the whole new editor population, there were about four times as many new good-faith editors who began contributing in February 2011 as in 2005.  While there has been an increase in the amount of vandals and spam since 2006, the proportion of such bad faith participation has not continued to grow exponentially.

Steven Walling and Maryana Pinchuk,
Wikimedia Foundation Fellows

(This is one in a series of posts about the ongoing research within the Community Department at the Wikimedia Foundation. Methodologies and results are very much experimental, and as such should be looked at with a skeptical eye. You can take a closer look at our data and other experiments on Meta.)

Does a constant stream of new editors really make Wikipedia better? Increasing participation is one of the top five priorities in our strategic plan. But when we talk about retention of newly registered editors, some readers and experienced editors rightfully wonder exactly how many edits by newbies actually improve the free encyclopedia.

In the Community Department, we’re facilitating the WikiGuides pilot program on the English Wikipedia to reach out to new contributors and mentor them. To do that successfully, we must quickly identify which new editors are actually doing good work.

So one of our working questions is: How many contributions by new editors are made in good faith and are worth retaining or improving?

We took a randomly selected batch of 155 new registered users on the English Wikipedia who made at least one edit in mid-April of this year. We looked at their first edit and ranked it on a 1-5 scale, with 1 being pure vandalism and 5 being an edit that is excellent, meaning it adds a significant chunk of verified, encyclopedic content and would be indistinguishable from a very experienced editor. Here’s what that composition looks like:

So you can see that even with a very high standard for quality — we only handed out a single “5” edit — most new editors made contributions worth retaining in some way, even if they weren’t perfect. More than half of these first edits needed no reworking to be acceptable based on current Wikipedia policy. Another 19% made good faith edits but needed additional help to meet standards defined in policy or guideline.

In order to investigate whether this has changed over time, we took a similar cohort from the same period in April 2004 and made the same qualitative assessment.

The key thing to note in comparing the two samples is that the percent of acceptable edits made by newbies did not dramatically decrease from 2004 to 2011. That’s despite the fact that the bar for quality has been raised over time, and that there are arguably fewer obvious contributions to make now that Wikipedia has grown by millions of articles.

Another relevant fact to consider is that while both cohorts are of 155 new editors, it took several days for that many new editors to join Wikipedia in 2004. In 2011, our sample is a tiny slice of the new editors arriving every month. For example: on Monday of this week more than 1,800 editors joined English Wikipedia and made at least one edit. On the equivalent day in 2004 there were only about 60.

Our sample strongly suggests that thousands of new editors still join Wikipedia every month with valuable contributions to make. Ensuring that we welcome these newcomers and show them the ropes is a top priority for ensuring Wikipedia’s continued success in our second decade.

(This is the first in what will be a new series of blog posts coming out of the Community Department at the Wikimedia Foundation. Starting now and continuing through the summer, we will be sharing the questions, experiments, and fresh data that currently drive our work. While you’ll get an inside look at what we’re doing, our numbers and analysis are still evolving and should be taken with a grain of salt.)

Steven Walling
Wikimedia Foundation Fellow, on behalf of the Community Dept. – especially Philippe Beaudette, James Alexander, and Maryana Pinchuk.

Mary Wollstonecraft, whose work "Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman" was featured for International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women’s Day, a holiday around the world that celebrates the accomplishments of women in all walks of life, as well as a collective reminder of past and continuing efforts to eliminate inequalities faced by women.

On the Main Pages of Wikipedias in every language, there is a longstanding tradition of presenting a list of holidays and anniversaries. For a few, Wikipedia projects curate special content that is relevant to that event. Perhaps the most famous example is the epic April Fool’s Day Main Page sections.

In consideration of the current discussion and community organizing around the Wikimedia movement’s own gender gap, we’d just like to take a moment and recognize the great encyclopedic content that was showcased on Wikipedia for International Women’s Day.

The first standout entry is Mary Wollstonecraft’s sequel to The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, which is assessed as a Featured-quality article on English Wikipedia and is the selected Featured Article of the day for March 8th, appearing front-and-center on en.wikipedia.org (until March 9th rolled around, in UTC time).

There are also nine solid entries in the “Did you know…” section of the English Main Page, ranging from abolitionist Anna Murray-Douglass to artist Claire Falkenstein.

Off of the front page of English Wikipedia, there is also an in-depth interview with community leaders from WikiProject Feminism in the latest edition of community newspaper The Signpost. That WikiProject is one of several now devoted to women-related topics, with WikiProject Women’s History as a second great example.

While the topic of gender is relevant to the evolution of the encyclopedia anyone can edit, this kind of activity is also something that goes on every day at Wikipedia regardless of the topic: people who care about a subject show up to participate and share free knowledge.

International Women’s Day is about focusing conversation on one problem that we face as a global society. Hopefully Wikipedia can be a place where we can support that conversation by providing neutral, verifiable information written by women and men in collaboration.

Steven Walling, Wikimedia Foundation Fellow

We’re only a few days away from celebrating Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary on Saturday, January 15th, and today the Wikimedia Foundation has officially announced it to the world.

Recently, I let you know that there were about 65 events happening. Today, there are more than 300. That growth is amazing, and as usual the dedication and creativity of the volunteers that make Wikipedia work is nothing short of astounding.

Numbers alone really fail to tell the story of just what we’re doing to commemorate “Wikipedia Day” in 2011 though. Of the hundreds of events on six continents, they all demonstrate a passion for free knowledge. Many more events combine our movement’s unique mission with activities that really suit the local community. From a Campus Party in São Paulo to a workshop and kite flying festival in Bangladesh, all of these events are powerful examples of the diversity we’re striving for in our movement. Many of these events have their own localized 10th anniversary designs – the Chinese Wikipedia 10 logo on this post is one.

I encourage you to browse the full list of events on ten.wikipedia.org, and to include editors, readers, and donors as you reflect on Wikipedia’s first 10 years. Wherever or however you choose to celebrate, this is a historic moment, and we’d like to thank you for making it happen.

Steven Walling
Community Dept. Fellow

In one month, Wikipedia will observe its 10th anniversary. On and around January 15th 2011, we will celebrate with volunteers, donors, and other supporters on six continents. From the launch of a new outreach project in Kenya to a film screening in Tel Aviv, there are currently 65 events of all kinds you can attend.

The complete list of anniversary activities can be found at ten.wikipedia.org, the public collaboration space where we’re cataloging everything the Wikipedia community is doing to commemorate our first decade. Most events are free to attend or very low cost. All are open to participation by anyone who wants to join in reflecting on our collective accomplishments and goals for the future.

The Wikimedia Foundation would like to thank those who are hosting celebrations by sending free 10th anniversary merchandise. These kits of t-shirts, stickers, and buttons are already starting to be shipped and come in a variety of colors and styles. If you’re planning something but haven’t yet listed it on the wiki and contacted us, now is the time to do so.

We’re very excited to see 65 distinct events taking place, and we hope you’ll attend one near you. But Wikipedia has always been an online community before anything else. That’s why we’re providing an opportunity for you to share your stories from Wikipedia’s first 10 years in many different forms. Please be bold, because we definitely want to hear your ideas for making the 10th anniversary one to remember.

The first event to kick off the celebrations will actually be on December 19th, at a Wikipedia party and fundraiser in London. We’ll be keeping you updated here on the events as we get closer to the anniversary, so keep an eye out for more news soon.

Steven Walling
Community Dept. fellow

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.

Wikimedia’s contribution campaign for 2010 is a serious endeavor. As Philippe told you yesterday, in a relatively short time period we need to raise the funds that keep Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects available for free to everyone.

Millions of people use Wikipedia every day. It’s clear that more than a few of our readers have noticed yesterday’s launch. Nearly all of the responses we find are constructive for thinking about how to keep Wikipedia free. Some of them are simply hilarious. Too hilarious not to share, in fact.

Here’s our list of the best, or rather the most amusing, tidbits about this year’s fundraiser. We’re glad we’re not the only folks with a healthy sense of humor. We consider this post to be in the tradition of Wikipedia humor, of which a favorite example is Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.

• Thanks to a link from O’Reilly Radar, Information is Beautiful created a rather stunning infographic about our appeals. Not to be outdone, Flowing Data has their own take.
• The Huffington Post also has a smart rundown on our banner testing strategy, and includes a poll where you can choose which of two banners you prefer.
• Time.com’s Techland blog declared Jimmy’s expression “Don Draper-esque.” We’re unofficially declaring that a win for Wikipedia’s cool factor.
• A blogger from Indiana wrote a satire which expresses another strong but nevertheless funny reaction to the banners.
• New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog has a short but sweet post that reminds readers of the somewhat surprising list of Wikipedia’s most popular articles.
• The community at social news site Reddit has several hysterical threads about the campaign, including Photoshop jokes and unfortunate coincidences. The same Reddit posts often have practical advice for how to help us improve the donation system.

Of course, Twitter is awash with 140 character analysis of the campaign so far. There’s really too much to link to, but choice examples include:

• Jeff Atwood of stackoverflow.com fame feeling a tad uncomfortable
• Insight into Chuck Norris-related vandalism
• Commentary on the reliability of Wikipedia
• And a gentleman who apparently feels a little guilty about the size of his donation. Hopefully he knows that our average gift isn’t over $30 USD, as you can see at our public donation statistics page.

If you’d like to keep up on similar unofficial news from our contribution campaign, please follow the #keepitfree hashtag on Twitter. For a more official take, follow @Wikipedia and @Wikimedia. Visit donate.wikimedia.org to do your part to sustain the free encyclopedia anyone can edit.

Steven Walling,
on behalf of Wikimedia’s Community Department