Hello Aisha, Indeed there is not much research on Wikimedia affiliates (chapters or other). What are you specifically interested in, for what research purpose? In sociology, history, management science? :-)
Kind regards Ziko https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ziko 2017-01-10 12:56 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <[email protected]>: > Hoi, > Return on investment is in our context all too arbitrary. Ask yourself; is > investing in gender gap important but does it make the best return on > investment. At the time I invested in documenting every person who died in > Wikidata. It was a good investment because now people have taken over from > me. Now at years end they use Wikidata to know who the "famous" people are. > > The question is not bang for the buck. The question is where are we weak > and how can we change this. My current project is adding information about > the nobility, the monarchs of particularly Asia. I am learning as I am > doing this and I blog about it. All the investments in students working on > Wikipedia does not make the quality of the subjects I write about better. > Many of the stuff I am involved with has a point of view that I find is > hardly neutral. It is however not the subjects students are taught. > > When a chapter, a community finds that a specific area is important to > them, they should be able to do so. Their relevance and work / investment > is not to be mistaken for a provable "return on investment". Because of the > gender gap I do give more time to the women I find. That awareness is > something you cannot measure but it does have a bearing. People with proper > historic knowledge could do much more; they would study the relationship > between marriages and peace between countries when they are ruled by > monarchs. They would bring this out. At this time we do not even have many > of the important battles and wars from the past... I am not saying this is > more important but it paints the picture. > > When you want return on investment, there are the things people do not > care about because it means that it changes the way things are. The best > return on investment for Wikidata is by replacing red links and wiki links > with references to Wikidata items. I dare anyone to find an argument how it > will not bring more quality to any Wikipedia. > > My point is that we will only look into the things that we know and care > for and in the process forget what we do it for. Money / investment is more > of the same. I prefer that we trust more and do not measure using our own > yard stick. > > NB I am into meters and metric myself :) > Thanks, > GerardM > > On 10 January 2017 at 11:30, Jane Darnell <[email protected]> wrote: > >> What's wrong with "return on investment"? And what is a "term of art" >> exactly? I agree with Kerry and Pine both about the frustrations, but I >> also agree with Asaf in terms of all the improvements WMF has made. The >> problem with making a yearly chapter plan is the lack of knowledge on what >> "impact" (still better than any other word) was achieved the previous year, >> making estimation nearly impossible. For the Dutch chapter, the various >> projects (WLM etc) have been able to come up with their own measurements >> over time. The problem with any new project is that there is never anything >> to base estimates on. I am a terrible estimator myself (even when I have >> pretty good data to base my estimate on), but I enjoy finding creative ways >> to measure things. Right now we are in general terrible at measuring >> project-related chapter stuff, and the stuff we are good at measuring is >> hard to share with the people who need it most (see Asaf's comments about >> active editors). >> >> Last night I had a long skype-chat with my gendergap friends in NL and we >> were plotting what we can measure now as a way of being able to measure >> impact after some (soon-to-be-dreamed-up) international women's day editing >> event in March. One of the problems with measuring edits is the need for >> anonymity that Asaf and Kerry talk about. So we need to somehow capture >> aggregated measurements, but how can we do this and how do we define a >> "gendergap-related edit"? Theoretically this is an edit made either by a >> new or existing editor -or- about a woman, and either one is prompted not >> by something random (organic growth model of Wikimedia projects such as >> Wikipedia), but specifically by something in our gendergap workgroup >> "output" (whatever that is). The return on investment (=what we get for >> giving our personal time) is the increase in such edits over time. At the >> end of the day, we need to measure "our" increase of aggregated edits >> against the "normal" increase in aggregated edits, and if we can never >> measure this, why don't we all just shut up and go back to editing? Well I >> believe that these efforts will at some point become measurable and I have >> good faith that these efforts are not just "drops in the bucket". Sometimes >> it helps to just keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and until we do, we >> keep at least a list of new and improved articles that we are sure were >> prompted by our efforts (though these are certainly not 100% of all the >> edits we have inspired). >> >> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Gerard Meijssen < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hoi, >>> With logic like "return on investment" you favour big over important. So >>> no, please no. >>> Thanks, >>> GerardM >>> >>> On 10 January 2017 at 07:23, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> To clarify my earlier comment about the term "impact": this has been >>>> used as a term of art by WMF in ways that I think are difficult even for >>>> native English speakers to grasp without specific instruction in how WMF >>>> uses the term. In practice, among grantees, the term seems to be used to >>>> mean a variety of things: "outcome", "output", "success", etc. I am hopeful >>>> that we can discontinue use of the word "impact" because of its confusing >>>> and varied uses in practice. >>>> >>>> I am in favor of attempting to quantify how much return on investment >>>> is received on the money and time (including precious volunteer time) >>>> invested in and by the affiliates and the people who participate in >>>> affiliate work. I suggest using terms other than "impact" to describe these >>>> returns on investment. >>>> >>>> I share a number of Kerry's frustrations with WMF grantmaking for >>>> affiliates; some of those frustrations were factors in my decision to >>>> significantly decrease my involvement in Cascadia Wikimedians, although >>>> there were other significant factors as well. >>>> >>>> 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 >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > >
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