I think this is an interesting idea, Pine. Thanks for bringing it up. I imagine that you could learn a lot from a few long-term, highly active Japanese Wikipedians by talking to them about how we have <problem/solution/process/policy> in English Wiki (and/or other wikis that are discussed often in the research lit) and learning where they see differences in their jawiki.
Resource-wise, this would be difficult to get on the plates of the WMF Research team. Personally, I spend a lot more time operating as infrastructure for other people's research and tool development (see ORES[1]) than doing my own research projects. I think that's generally true of people on our team. However, I'd love to *help* someone else look into this. I think I could do a pretty good job of connecting the English Wikipedia-focused peer-review lit to casual discussions of Wikipedia stuff. I could also probably help pull in some other academics to help flesh out references to the academic lit. Pine, maybe you could kick off the project by posting a set of questions about Japanese Wikipedia on a wiki page and trying to see if you can find a Japanese Wikipedian willing to give their perspective. Here are some of my own questions: * Do you do anything like subject-focused WikiProjects? * Why, do you suspect, that your new article survival rate is so high?[1] * How do you help newcomers figure out how things work (rules, processes, jargon, etc.)? * How do you find and address the most persistent cases of vandalism and other bad-faith activities? * Do you have essays like we do in English Wikipedia? If so, which are your personal favorites and why? * What gadgets and 3rd party tools do you use? Which tools seem to be popular? 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_article_creation -Aaron On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 2:05 AM, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Yusuke, > > It's nice to hear from you. I remember you from our time on the IEG > Committee together. > > ENWP has its share of bots and sockpuppets too, but I still think Japanese > Wikipedia has some good statistics. > > Let's consider the 100+ edits/month users. According to > https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm, Japanese Wikipedia has 372 by > last count, which is the 6th highest of all language Wikipedias. Now let's > look at these ratios: > > English Wikipedia: 3340 editors with 100+ edits/month, divided by 1500M > prim+sec speakers, gives us a ratio of about 2.227 highly active editors > per million prim+sec speakers. > > Japanese Wikipedia: 372 editors with 100+ edits/month, divided by 132M > prim+sec speakers, gives us a ratio of about 2.818 highly active editors > per million prim+sec speakers. > > So even by that measure, Japanese Wikipedia is doing relatively well. > > Perhaps there are Japanese universities that WMF could contact about the > possibility of doing this kind of research, and WMF could provide funding > if necessary. (Here in the US, I believe that some similar work is funded > by the National Science Foundation; perhaps there is a similar source of > funding for research in Japan that could also be asked for funding for the > project). I'm not sure who at WMF would need to support this kind of work > for it to go forward, but I think that Dario is at least open to the idea. > Perhaps he'd be willing to have a conversation with you about how to set up > this kind of research project; I for one would be interested in in the > findings. > > Pine > > > On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Yusuke Matsubara <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Pine, >> >> > I'd be >> > interested in learning more about what makes their community's edition >> > of Wikipedia so successful in terms of a high proportion of Japanese >> > speakers contributing to the site, that could be applied to other >> > language editions. >> >> Are you thinking of qualitative research or quantitative research? >> Regarding the former, the question reminded me of a research project >> on the history of the Russian Wikipedia and other wikis (lead by >> Maryana Pinchuk in 2011) which might serve as a reference point. >> [1][2] >> >> From the project's description: >> >> > Across the globe, there are currently over 270 autonomous >> > language-based Wikipedia projects, plus many sister projects such as >> > Wikiversity, Wikibooks, and Commons. Why are the communities behind >> > some of these projects still experiencing rapid growth while others >> > are leveling off or gradually declining? How have different >> > communities of volunteers overcome cultural, social, and technological >> > obstacles to create the most up-to-date online reference materials in >> > the world? What lessons can communities learn from each other in order >> > to make every project more healthy? >> >> I would be interested in how much resources (if any) the WMF provided >> to the research project, and how much effort from the communities was >> needed. An experienced Japanese Wikipedian and me floated the idea of >> something similar for Japanese Wikipedia one or two years ago - at >> least regarding the community resources, we were not sure how we can >> secure the time and energy required for such a study, especially from >> the few volunteers qualified to do so and who tend to be already busy >> for other Wikimedia-related volunteer work. >> >> Also, regarding "a high proportion of Japanese speakers contributing >> to the site", this might not be as great as it might look like. The >> number comes from the number of accounts with 5+ edits in a month. >> Sockpuppets and throwaway accounts could easily skew this number (and >> sadly they are incentivized to do so because of a 5-edit requirement >> in the voting rules). If you look at the proportion of the 100+ edit >> users, Japanese Wikipedia is not as high. >> >> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiHistories_fellowship >> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RuWiki_History_(Doronina_and >> _Pinchuk)/English >> >> -Yusuke >> >> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote: >> > The topic of audiences was discussed at today's WMF Metrics and >> > Activities meeting. >> > >> > Looking at https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm, and sorting by >> > editors (5+ per million speakers), there are some language communities >> > that appear to have high participation rates on their language's >> > edition of Wikipedia, but I hear very little from them in meta >> > discussions. Japanese Wikipedia comes to mind in particular, with its >> > large number of primary + secondary language speakers. I'd be >> > interested in learning more about what makes their community's edition >> > of Wikipedia so successful in terms of a high proportion of Japanese >> > speakers contributing to the site, that could be applied to other >> > language editions. >> > >> > Could WMF direct more resources to studying the successes on Japanese >> > Wikipedia, and how information about those successes could be applied >> > to other language editions of Wikipedia? >> > >> > Pine >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Wiki-research-l mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > >
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