On Thursday, December 8th, the Wikimedia Foundation will launch its second semi-annual survey (2011) of Wikipedia editors.  In order to capture editor trends, we are using the same methodology as the April 2011 Editor Survey – editors logged in to Wikipedia will receive a notification, as every editor is eligible to participate. To ensure that all editors have an equal probability of participating in the survey, all logged-in users will see the invitation only once. We’ll do a soft launch on Thursday (all Wikipedias, excluding English) and switch it on for the English Wikipedia next week, to accommodate the Harvard/Sciences Po survey that is launching soon on the English Wikipedia. We urge all Wikipedia editors to give us their feedback and participate in the survey. For more information, you can read the FAQ we’ve posted detailing the survey.

The survey is currently available in various languages in addition to English, including: Chinese (traditional, Hong Kong), Chinese (simplified), Arabic, Catalan, German, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian. The Foundation will conduct the survey in languages for which translations are available, and for the remainder of Wikipedia language projects the survey will be available in English.  The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete.  Since we are interested in trending the data, about 90% of the questions are the same as in the April 2011 survey. We have added a few new questions based on findings from Wikipedia Summer of Research project and other research work that has been conducted at the Foundation.

The current survey covers the following topics:

• Demographics
• Brief section on editors’ technology usage
• Editing activities and contributions
• Editor interactions
• Opinions of editors about chapters, the Foundation and participation in board elections.

We’re looking forward to participation from editors all around the world while the survey is active. Please spread the word, and we would like to thank you in advance for taking the time to contribute your views!

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

The Wikimedia Foundation is working on new products and global initiatives to increase participation in our projects, specifically Wikipedia. To help inform the development of this work we’ve been researching the trends and patterns of Wikipedia editors, most recently through the Wikipedia Summer of Research initiative and also with data from the 2011 Wikipedia Editors Survey.

While studying editor participation trends, we have hypothesized that acrimony and disagreement in the editing community could be a leading cause of a decrease in project participation. To test this hypothesis as a segment of our analysis of responses to the Editor Survey (report here), we defined the Wikipedia Editor Satisfaction Index (WESI). The WESI is a metric gauging the overall satisfaction of the editing community and interactions/assessments of fellow editors. We used responses to two questions on the survey: how they described their fellow editors (picking from a set of adjectives), and whether they believed community feedback had helped them personally. These responses were weighted, and then normalized to a 0-10 rating.

The results were encouraging. About 47 percent of editors surveyed scored 10/10. In all, about 77 percent of those surveyed scored 7.5 or higher, indicating that the majority of our editing community is very satisfied with their experience on Wikipedia and has a healthy assessment of fellow editors. This is great news – as Wikipedia continues to focus on improving the editing experience, while also making efforts to foster new participation (especially in the Global South), the community’s support is vital.

Distribution of WESI scores across all surveyed Wikipedia editors

In order to understand what factors determine an Editor’s satisfaction with Wikipedia, we performed a multilinear regression¹ on the WESI metric. Some interesting findings:

1. Help is appreciated: Having others from the community add content or correct grammatical mistakes greatly increases the likelihood of an editor reporting a positive experience.
2. Peer recognition matters a lot more than any other kind of recognition: Editors highly value the respect and recognition of their peers. Editors who received barnstars or any other form of reward from their peers were much more likely to report a higher score. Interestingly, events like having an article featured or promoted to the front page did not have a very significant effect on editor satisfaction.
3. Explanations for reverts are key: When an edit is reverted, not explaining why has a strong negative impact on editor satisfaction. Similarly, an explanation actually has a strong positive influence on editor satisfaction.

A comparision of WESI scores reveals that women are, on average, less satisfied than men, though not by much – about 5 percent. Although transsexuals/transgenders (marked below as Others) together account for only 0.5 percent of our sample, it’s important to note that their satisfaction scores are significantly lower.

WESI score comparision by Gender

The Editor Survey Report highlights some more findings, but the emerging theme is simple: be nice to each other, and help out where you can!

As we work towards establishing the WESI metric as a standard for understanding the community’s experiences on Wikipedia, we’ll continue to share more findings (and implications) of the Wikipedia Editor Satisfaction Index.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

Ayush Khanna, Global Development Intern

(This is the eleventh in series of blog posts where we previously shared insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey.)

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_analysis

We have blogged recently about the results from our semi-annual editor survey. Although the survey was conducted in 22 languages, it didn’t include Japanese, due to the March earthquake and ensuing Tsunami in Japan.  It is with great pleasure that we would like to share toplines from a survey of editors conducted recently on the Japanese Wikipedia. We fielded it for about a week in the end of July, and got 208 complete responses.  Like the semi-annual editor survey, the Japanese editor survey was available only to registered users of the Japanese Wikipedia and every editor saw the invitation to participate in the survey only once. The latter was done to control for bias towards more active editors.

The topline data covers all the questions from the survey: demographics, interactions with community members, technology ecology, and editing behaviors.  We are hoping that the Japanese community (as well as others) will check the data, conduct some analysis and provide feedback to us.

Please also check out the graphs for some key demographics of Japanese editors. The results from the editor survey in the Japanese Wikipedia show that the Japanese editing community is similar to others demographically: predominantly male, highly educated and slightly older than what we imagined our community to be before we conducted the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the ninth in series of blog posts where we previously shared insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey.)

As most of the readers of this blog are aware the Wikimedia foundation board of trustees  ”manages the foundation and supervises disposition and solicitation of donation.” The community elects three members to the board of trustees. The rest of the seats on the board are shared between community members appointed by chapters, community founder and trustees with specific expertise appointed by the board.  If you are interested in finding out more about the structure of the board of trustees, please check out this diagram here. 

The elections to the board of trustees have been held annually since 2004. You can find out more details about the elections here.

But according to the Editor Survey, April 2011, only a small minority of editors has voted in the board elections. Thirteen percent of editors in the survey pointed out that they had voted in WMF board of trustee elections.  Among those who had not voted in the election, the number one reason for not voting in the election was they (45%) had never heard of the elections.  Thirty-four percent said that they were not interested in participating in board elections. We also asked the editors who stated that they had never heard of the elections if they would vote in the future since they now know about the board of trustee elections A majority (54%) of them said that they would be interested in voting in the future. In addition, 9% of editors pointed out that they had run or would like to run in the board of trustee elections, and the rest said they were not interested (84%) or were not eligible to run for elections (8%).

Reasons for not voting in board elections

We would like to take this opportunity to call upon all our community members to have their voice heard and participate in large numbers in the next board of trustee elections. The data also shows that there is a need to raise awareness about the board elections. We welcome your ideas about how we can do this. Please share your ideas through comments to this blog post.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the eighth in series of blog posts where we will share insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey. Later in August we will be providing raw data from the survey and a final report to the community. )

As you may know, the WMF strategic plan released last March set ambitious goals for our movement’s next five years. At the top of the agenda for the forthcoming fiscal year is to increase mobile page views of Wikipedia to two billion by the end of June, 2012 – a substantial increase from the current count of 726 million in March, 2011. To meet this goal, the engineering, strategy and global development teams are redesigning our mobile site to provide an enhanced reading experience and to introduce mobile-specific editing capabilities. Our current mobile website (m.wikipedia.org) does not support editing, though our survey found that a small minority of editors (7%) edit desktop Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) on their mobile phone. The redesign of our mobile site is also strategically important for us to meet our goal of increasing reach in the global south, as majority of that population will be accessing Internet through mobile devices in the near future, completely bypassing the desktop web.

We have had interesting, wide-reaching discussions within our volunteer community in an effort to understand what new functionalities can be in-built into the mobile site to meet the needs of our editors. Our Editors Survey, April 2011 also asked editors which editing features they were more likely to use if they were in-built into the mobile website.

Despite the common perception (not including the SMS generation) that mobile phones are not well suited for entering text, 28% of editors in the survey said they were extremely/very likely to use a feature that allows paragraph and sentence editing, and 22% expressed support for a ‘creation of new article’ feature on mobile phones. We were surprised that editors pointed to a feature that would help upload pictures to Wikimedia Commons as the least likely to be used (only 21% provided strong support), although uploading a photo requires fewer clicks than writing text. Some editors (22%) also expressed support for anti-vandalism tools, such as Huggle, on the mobile phone.

Percent who are extremely/very likely to use the listed features

We have also conducted user experience research of mobile readers of Wikipedia in India and Brazil to understand how we can enhance the mobile reading experience. In our interviews, we found that one high-ranking feature on the wish list of mobile readers is the ability to save an article and read it later offline. Even among editors, 38% said they were extremely/very likely to use a feature that would allow them to save articles for offline reading or editing.

We are confident that with the help of our community (editors and programmers) we will meet our goal of delivering a phone-based Wikipedia to more people globally. We have several initiatives underway, including a new mobile survey and a call for testers of the mobile gateway, that require both participation and feedback to maximize efficacy.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the seventh in series of blog posts where we will share insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey)

The Wikimedia Foundation has made a strategic goal of increasing volunteer participation, in particular by encouraging women to edit Wikipedia.  In the Wikipedia editors survey we analyzed the edit history of male and female editors to look at the key differences between the two genders. An analysis of self-reported edits by gender shows significant differences at the lower and higher end of the editing spectrum, but also shows relatively similar patterns between edit counts by men and women in the middle of the spectrum.

While women editors are more likely to make 1 to 50 lifetime edits compared to men, male editors are more likely to make more than 10,000 + edits compared to women. One-third of women editors reported that they had made between 1 to 50 edits, compared to 18% of male editors. On the other hand, a higher percentage of men (23%) reported having made upwards of 10,000 edits, versus 18% of female editors. There are no statistically significant differences among men and women editors within other groups based on total edit count.

A full 91% of editors who participated in the April 2011, Editor Survey are male, while 8.5% are female. The remainder (0.5%) identified as transsexual or transgender.

Much has been written about Wikipedia’s highly skewed gender distribution, including this recent NYT story.  WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner wrote this insightful blog post on the topic as well.

The Foundation is aiming to increase the number of women participants on Wikipedia from 9,000 (as of spring 2011) to 11,700 by spring 2012. We will accomplish this partly by introducing tools and features that making editing simple for everyone – including a visual editor.  We’ve also seen great success in the participation of women via our Wikipedia in the class room initiatives.  These efforts, which are expanding around the world, tend to bring in a much representative proportion of men and women contributors.

Keep an eye out for future product updates that will enable us to work towards our strategic goals of increasing participation. We have a tall task ahead of us, and we’ll reach it even sooner if we all put our heads together. This is one smart community.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the sixth in series of blog posts where we will share insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey)

Wikipedia is undoubtedly the most successful collaborative online experiment in the history of Internet. Wikipedia editors spend hours writing and researching articles that have made the project the success that it is today. But have you ever wondered what other online activities Wikipedia editors participate in? Results from the Editor Survey, April 2011, show that apart from the time that they spend online editing Wikipedia, editors are a lot like other Internet users: emailing, using Facebook, watching online videos on YouTube or other sites, using Instant messaging services like AIM and Google Talk, using Twitter or other similar micro-blogging platform.

Facebook is clearly more popular with Wikipedia editors than Twitter.  Sixty-eight percent of Wikipedia editors use Facebook compared to only 30% who use Twitter. Online gaming is not a popular online activity for our editors. Only 18% of Wikipedia editors play online, multi-player games likes World of Warcraft and 18% play online games like Farmville or Cityville.  Like the rest of the Internet population, using location-aware services like Foursquare has not taken off with Wikipedia editors with only 11% using these types of services.  The Wikimedia movement has had a strong affinity to open source and openness in general, so it is no surprise to see that some editors (22%) contribute to open source software.

We also researched what kinds of contributions editors make across several social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc. Facebook dominates contributions in social media with more editors posting or commenting on status updates, and liking content on Facebook. Since fewer editors are using Twitter, fewer editors tweet or interact with other Twitter users. Blogging continues to be a platform for sharing for about one-third of editors.  Our data clearly shows that Wikipedia editors not only contribute to Wikipedia, but are contributors to different social media streams too.

Helping us better-understand Wikipedia editors’ activities around social media helps us make better decisions about which new features and technologies we should research for MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia and thousands of other wikis online.  This data also helps us determine new ways of improving dialog and communication among Wikipedians, both on-wiki and off.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the fifth in series of blog posts where we will share insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey)

“Our brains and our behavior are driven by feedback loops. Harness their power and change your life,” points out Wired magazine in its latest cover story on how feedback can be used to change human behavior. Similarly, data from the Wikipedia Editor Survey, April 2011, shows that feedback from other editors – especially positive feedback – encourages more editing. According to the survey, Wikipedia editors reported that positive interactions and experiences with others made them more likely to edit Wikipedia, and, as a direct corollary, negative interactions and experiences made them less likely to edit Wikipedia.

The majority of editors pointed out that positive interactions (having grammatical errors fixed by another editor, receiving compliments and barnstars from fellow editors, and experiencing “their” article make it to front page) made them more likely to edit Wikipedia.

Percent who believe that following interactions make them more likely to edit

While positive interactions create positive feedback loops that encourage editing, negative interactions reduce the likelihood of editing. These interactions include the perception of being looked down upon by other editors, as well as seeing edits reverted without any explanation.

Percent who believe that following interactions make them less likely to edit

Fortunately for our community, every listed action leading to a negative feedback loop is an easy fix: treat other editors with respect and encourage their growth as a contributor, and every negative trend we see here could literally disappear. So please, Wikipedia editors, continue doing the good work and providing positive feedback to your fellow editors. The successful growth of our project depends on it.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the fourth in series of blog posts where we will share insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey)

There are more bilingual and multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual, and the global community of Wikipedia editors is no exception.  According to the Editors Survey, April 2011, over half of Wikipedia editors contribute to more than one language Wikipedia, and an overwhelming majority (72%) read Wikipedia in more than one language.

Number of languages to which editors contribute

Number of Wikipedia languages which editors read

In addition, with an overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors reading and editing English Wikipedia, English Wikipedia gets a lot of attention from Wikipedia editors. English Wikipedia has the largest and most diverse pool of editors with editors from other projects contributing to English Wikipedia. In total 76% of Wikipedia editors contribute to English Wikipedia, although only 40 percent primarily contribute to English Wikipedia.  93 percent of Wikipedia editors read English Wikipedia at some level, and about half  (49%) of them primarily read English Wikipedia. We can clearly see that editors who work primarily in other language projects are helping English Wikipedia grow.

Percent who contribute/primarily contribute to the following languages

Percent who read/primarily read the following languages

We’ll have a few more blog post insights from the Wikipedia Editors survey next week.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

(This is the third in series of blog posts exploring insights from the April 2011 Editors Survey)

Last week we released the very first insights from the recent semi-annual survey of Wikipedia editors.  This week we’re releasing the survey’s top-line data.

The top-line data includes all of the major indications from the survey of editors: the demographics, questions proposed in the survey, and top-line responses.  We’re sharing this information now in order to allow the community to review the results, share them, and reflect on the data.

We will continue to share insights from the data over the next few weeks, as well as the entire dataset (which we’re in the process of anonymizing).  We will also be releasing a full survey report on-wiki that details the findings and observations, and reflects on how the insights impact the Wikimedia movement.