CC'ing Edward Galvez, our survey specialist. Hi Pete,
I support this idea in general, and am always interested in learning more about the demographics of our communities. A few considerations/suggestions (these are opinions: I'm not in a position to launch or kill a project like this). - It takes much more than a month to deploy and analyze a (useful, successful, and LEGAL) survey. Especially when you're asking about people's off-wiki lives (see Dan's comments above). WMF ran an annual editor survey for several years, and ended up stopping in part because it took a lot of time, and there was no clear research question to justify the continued effort of re-running the survey. - I'd like to hear a more detailed rationale about why we think the demographics of English Wikipedia may have changed since the last survey. - I'd like to hear a more detailed rationale for why it is more important to understand the demographics of English Wikipedians (who have already been surveyed) as opposed to, say, the demographics of contributors to languages associated with countries where a large number of people are coming online for the first time (and hence represent areas of significant content growth within Wikipedia as a whole). We've run comparatively fewer surveys targeted at these users, and we have greater reason to suspect that the demographics of these contributors are actively shifting. - This sounds to me like it could be a great Individual Engagement Grant project. If someone submitted this as an IEG and it was accepted, I would be happy to support the project by working with the project leader to craft a useful survey and get the relevant Legal approval. Best, Jonathan On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:05 AM, Dan Andreescu <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Pete. This is a subject that comes up every now and then, but there is > no active effort I know of to measure demographics. While it seems simple, > and should be in a more ideal world, it is not. Any sort of > self-identification tends to be heavily biased because a lot of minorities, > when they identify as such, are harassed in some pretty miserable ways. We > could run some of the tools we have to survey, like quick survey, and keep > results anonymous, what specifically were you looking for? > > > On Friday, April 8, 2016, Peter Ekman <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Jimbo, on his talk page, said I should ask somebody at the WMF about >> what's been going on and what might be happening soon re: Wikipedia >> demographic surveys >> >> Please see, >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Updated_demographic_statistics_on_Wikipedia_editors >> >> My feelings are: >> *This is an important problem that should be easily dealt with and can >> be solved by a commitment from the top brass, and >> *we need to take a spectacularly simple approach to just get it done. >> >> Any feedback would be appreciated via my e-mail or even on Jimbo's talk. >> >> Sincerely, >> Pete Ekman >> aka User:Smallbones >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Analytics mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >> > > _______________________________________________ > Analytics mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics > > -- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
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