Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia/Studies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major proposed and ongoing studies of Wikipedia use should be listed and categorized here. Hypotheses, methods, and implementations can be discussed here if public; and should be noted after experiments have been completed.

Contents

[edit] Methodologies

  • Randomized subsets - a traditional way to run large-scale experiments in a neutral way is to identify a class of visitors, editors, or pages; select a randomized subset of that class; and introduce a variation to the randomized subset. Then metrics can be evaluated for both the subset and the entire class, and inferences drawn about what effects the variation had.
  • Stratification - With or without randomized subsets, stratification involves identifying a metric, splitting up a class into quintiles
  • Pilot studies - running small, short initial studies to provide an example of how to run and evaluate a study; and to iron out implementation details specific to Wikipedia and its community.


[edit] Studies

[edit] First edit

What motivates readers to edit the site?

  • New page creation
  • Minor corrections - What encourages users to fix typos and other quick mistakes?
  • Sandboxes - what encourages users to try editing the sandbox, the introduction page, etc? o find out about wiki syntax?

[edit] Recognition

What effect does recognition have on editing?

  • Sending notices to people when articles they've touched are featured on the main page.
  • ...

[edit] Donations

There have been many good suggestions about ways to improve donation drives and funrdaisers for Wikipedia; a specific idea follows. Please add other ideas in their own sections below.

What motivates readers to donate? How do changes to link placement and text affect donations?

  • During fund drives
  • During the rest of the year?
  • Stratified across frequency of reading contribution

What statistics could be gathered to help answer these questions? Both general and specific statistics are welcome.

  • Queries on an entire history-laded database
  • Queries on randomized subsets of pages/histories
  • Queries on randomized subsets of users
  • The # of readers per page, and their referrers; by date and time (anonymized)
  • The most popular search queries / terms; and the actions of those who entered them (anonymized)
  • ...

What variations could be tried out to study the influences on contribution and donor relationships over time?

  • Changing the anonymous sitenotice
  • Changing the reactions of a body of complicit editors to the target visitor
  • Changing the default site skin
  • ...

[edit] Retention

What do long-term contributors have in common? How do they interact with one another? What encourages these people to stay, or to leave?

[edit] Metrics and statistics

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/k/Wikipedia%7EWikiProject_Wikidemia_Studies_5ae1.html"