Wikipedians 90% male and largely altruist; 800 public policy students add 8.8 million bytes; brief news
First results of editor survey: Wikipedians 90% male, 71% altruist
Mani Pande, the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Global Development Research, has shared the first results from an online survey among Wikipedia contributors ("Wikipedia editors do it for fun: First results of our 2011 editor survey", the first in a series of postings about the findings). The survey had been translated into 22 languages (English version), it saw over 5000 participants.
Of the participants, 90% identified as male and 9% as female, a number even lower than the 13% found by the earlier UNU-MERIT study (which, despite some questions about its methodology, had formed the basis of widespread discussions about Wikipedia's "gender gap" earlier this year, see Signpost coverage).
The two most frequently selected reasons for continuing to edit Wikipedia were "I like the idea of volunteering to share knowledge" (71%) and "I believe that information should be freely available to everyone" (69%), followed by "I like to contribute to subject matters in which I have expertise" (63%) and "It's fun" (60%).
Last month, WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner had already highlighted another early result of the survey, concerning editors' satisfaction with the work of the WMF/Wikimedia chapters/all volunteers/themselves, in an interview with GerardM (see Signpost coverage).
Public Policy Initiative wraps up
In a blog posting titled "Public Policy Initiative wraps up pilot academic year", the WMF's LiAnna Davis gave some statistics about the achievements of the now concluding Public Policy Initiative (which the Foundation had announced in May 2010, funded by an $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation, see for example the brief summary in the Signpost's "2010 in review"). During the project, more than 800 students from US universities contributed 8.8 million bytes to the English Wikipedia, improving articles they worked on "from an average score of 6.88, before the project, to 16.54".
The pilot project is being generalized and extended to a Global University Program. In the US, the system of "Campus Ambassadors" and participating professors introduced by the PPI will be transformed into "Volunteer Regional Ambassadors", while outside the US, the first Campus Ambassadors have recently been trained, in Pune, India.
In a separate blog posting, Davis described the experiences of one student participant whose additions to the article National Democratic Party (Egypt), made in the fall (northern autumn) term, received unexpectedly high readership numbers during the Egyptian revolution a few months afterwards.
The PPI was the subject of an article on the blog of Creative Commons last week, based on interviews with Pete Forsyth, who as the Wikimedia Foundation’s first Public Outreach Officer had been a "key architect" of the PPI, and others.
Briefly
- Russian president pushes for Creative Commons licencing: Further to his 29 April meeting with Internet representatives, including Wikimedia (Signpost coverage), Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has issued instructions to the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications to draft amendments to Russian legislation which will "give authors the right to make their works available on a free-licence basis to the public at large (along the lines of Creative Commons, GNU FDL)". According to a 2008 letter to a Wikimedian from Natalya Timakova, the President's Press Attache, Creative Commons licencing is not currently on the statutes of the Russian Federation. As a sidenote, since October 2008, materials from the President's website at http://www.kremlin.ru have been licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0 licencing. Medvedev has given the Ministry until 1 August to act on his instructions.
- Wikimania program: A preliminary schedule for the upcoming Wikimania in Haifa, Israel, has been announced. It will include plenary lectures by Yochai Benkler, Sue Gardner, Joseph Reagle and Jimmy Wales.
- WMF monthly report: The Wikimedia Foundation's report for May 2011 has been published. Among other items that were previously covered in The Signpost, it summarizes the Wikimedia Research Committee's efforts to reorganize the pages about Wikimedia-related research on Meta.
- Board minutes: The minutes for the May 11 IRC meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees have been published. They mostly concern the draft for the 2011–12 annual plan, mentioning "suggestions to reduce targets for staff growth to match recent actual growth rates"; and the Foundation's operating reserve (cf. Signpost coverage: "IRC office hour with Sue Gardner and others on Foundation's financial planning"). Several outstanding minutes for earlier meetings were published: October 2009, May 2010 (mentioning early discussions about offensive content, and a rejected resolution "to strengthen the Board's earlier statement on educational content" – a different resolution about offensive content was adopted recently, see last week's "News and notes"), June 2010 and April 2011.
- Offline edition of Malayalam Wikisource: On his blog, Indian Wikimedian Santhosh Thottingal (a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Language Committee) discussed the technical background to the first offline version of the Malayalam Wikisource. In related news, The Hindu reported on "the fourth annual meeting of Malayalam Wikimedia activists".
- New Indian newsletter: On the website of the Indian Wikimedia chapter, a new edition of "WikiPatrika" has been published – an independent monthly community-written and -edited newspaper, partly modeled after The Signpost, covering the increasing Wikimedia-related activities in the country. Last September had already seen the publication of an earlier Indian community newsletter (Signpost coverage).
- Wikimedia Österreich reports: The Austrian Wikimedia chapter has published its report for May and started its report for June. Among other activities, they describe preparations for the "Fundraiser Summit" which will bring together representatives from various Wikimedia chapters and the WMF in Vienna this week to discuss the upcoming annual fundraiser.
- Wikimedia Argentina report: The Argentinian Wikimedia chapter has published its report for May 2011. Among other activities, it describes a Wikicontest to write articles about Ibero-American women on the Spanish-language Wikipedia to counter the possible effects of the gender gap among Wikipedia contributors.
- Wikimedia Sverige report: The Swedish Wikimedia chapter has published its report for May 2011. Among other activities, it mentions talks "with parliamentarians and other institutions" about the possibilities of a digitized cultural heritage ("a potential billion-worth").
- Today's featured list debuts on the Main Page: After a formal proposal concluded with unanimous support, a new feature has been added to the Main Page: Today's featured list. Starting June 13, each Monday, one featured list will be showcased on the Main Page. See this week's "Featured content" for full coverage.
- Wikipedia learning game: User:Ocaasi and others are developing a concept for "an educational, interactive, web-game using a simulated Wikipedia interface that leads new users through a series of realistic "missions" to familiarize them with the mechanics, navigation, philosophy, and practices of actual editing", tentatively titled "The Wikipedia Adventure".
- Wikipedia for Afghanistan families: Wikimedia Trustee Sj blogged about "Introducing Afghan families to Wikipedia" with the help of the XO laptops distributed by One Laptop per Child (where Sj serves as Director of Outreach).
- IRC logs: The IRC logs for the June 10 Office hour with Sue Gardner and the June 4 general Wikimedia meeting have been published.
Discuss this story
Editor survey
The survey did not even include my main reason for editing Wikipedia — I learn from the experience. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:29, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Public Policy Initiative wraps up
I have a general concern about the Ambassador program. I really don't get the impression that a lot of these people will stick (don't see them moving into other areas of Wiki, little bit of interaction I had, they were passive or tentative).
The other thing is the articles they were generally writing was not where we need help. More stubs on small towns or fire departments is not what this place needs (some may even be non notable). What we need is better coverage of the core. Someone like NYM (an AP Bio student) doing an FA on a turtle is much more worthwhile. We could use more work on the elements, species, important historical people (presidents for instance), "Great Books", etc. Taking one of those to GA+ could be a good "research paper".
I am sure it was a fun project for the policy kids, but just think we could do more effective "slaving runs on the colleges". I DO hope that the organization and lessons learned can be leveraged. But more to other departments.
TCO (talk) 01:48, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"improving articles they worked on "from an average score of 6.88, before the project, to 16.54"." Out of what? 20, 25, 100, 1000, 7/18ths of a super banana parp? -- Jeandré, 2011-06-14t13:44z
Please remember that this was just a pilot program. As noted above, the choice of "public policy" articles was based on the wishes of the funding provider, but there were some B-class articles, and lots of C-class articles created from scratch that filled in a lot of holes in this area, which was, indeed, underserved in the encyclopedia. Going forward, the program will open up to, I believe, the whole range of academic subjects, and I hope that there are a lot of literature contributions, in particular. As for the students "sticking", the focus of the pilot program (again, because of the funder's preference) was not really on gaining new editors, but rather on encouraging universities and professors to introduce Wikipedia into the classroom. The education initiative was certainly successful based on the goals set for it, and I hope it will expand greatly in the future. As the attitude of academia changes towards Wikipedia, we may be able to mine universities as a major source of new editors in the future; but simply educating professors about the virtues of the encyclopedia is a great step forward. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Public Policy Initiative has been a learning experience for students, professors, and Ambassadors. Wikipedians who participated in the program are working to expand and improve the Ambassadors' program. Please see Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors for more information. -- Donald Albury 10:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Transgender
I may be showing my age and ignorance here, but I was genuinely surprised to see transgender/transsexual at 1% of the gender pie chart. Of course 1% in this context could mean anything from >0.5% to <1.5%, but does anyone have a figure as to what proportion of humanity are transgender/transsexual? ϢereSpielChequers 12:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Graduates
I'd be interested in seeing the education breakdown of the editors we have who are over 21. I'd strongly suspect that there will be a high correlation between the 27% in the 12 - 21 age groups and the 39% whose highest educational level so far is Primary or Secondary. Of course I'm hoping that the 13% of our editors who are currently 12 - 17 years old will all get degrees in the next ten years, but I suspect next to none of them have so far. So amongst our editors who are 18 or over over 70% are presumably graduates, and amongst those of normal university graduation age or above my estimate is that over 80% are graduates. ϢereSpielChequers 12:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Age breakdown refinement/Gender gap
Future surveys should have greater refinement in age categories: 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70+... WP is widely perceived as a "young mens' pursuit," but I have a hunch that there will be increasing participation in the future in upper age echelons — one key factor in editing being the availability of time. I'm also a little surprised that the gender gap is showing no signs of closing. I believe the often aggressive culture of WP, revolving around editing controversies, heated deletion debates (replete with a sense of "ownership" of the debate process by some aggressive nominators), and bannings, is a good part of this problem. But Wikipedia is what it is and inertia rules the process... Carrite (talk) 03:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC) last edit: Carrite (talk) 03:25, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia Adventure