Joseph Reagle wrote: > The one finding I found of particular interest: 32.95% noted they would be > more likely to contribute if "It was clear to me that other people would > benefit from my efforts". This leads me to a puzzle I've wondered about: is > have someone tweak/add to your contribution -- rather than delete it -- a > sign of being of use, or of being incompetent
[snip] First thought: if a person has not contributed to Wikipedia, they can hardly be discouraged by the fact that somebody else edits their work, right? That said, the given reasons for non-contribution are certainly missing a major one: "because I don't want others to be able to change my work". That, of course, can have at least two explanations: first, indeed, because "that would mean my work was not valued" (I wonder what policy to cite here - "Wikipedia's article are eternal drafts and it should be expected that even the best work will be improved by others") and second "because I don't think anybody else is competent enough to change my work/I should be consulted if somebody wants to change MY work" (WP:OWN?). Second thought: Seeing as respondents were allowed to select more then one answer, I wonder how the "It was clear to me that other people would benefit from my efforts" answer is correlated to "I knew there were specific topic areas that needed my help" and "I was confident my contributions would be valued and kept". I wonder if those three are really significantly different? In my experience, a lot of people answers along the lines of "but there is nothing I know that would be worth sharing with others" (or, simply "but I know nothing useful to share!"), which encompasses the three reasons above... -- Piotr Konieczny "The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in theory." _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
