Community Insights/2018 Report/Community Programs

The Community Programs team supports shared learning for growing core programs, especially the Wikipedia Education Program, The Wikipedia Library, and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) initiatives.

In the survey, the Community Programs team would like to answer the following questions:

In what ways do contributors participate in key technologies Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons?
What are the opinions of contributors about key technologies and community practices which affect community programs?
Among Wikimedia contributors, what are the current attitudes towards the Education program?
What is the contributor awareness about, knowledge about and participation in Community Programs?
What are the support needs for those who organize Wikimedia programs?

Results

1. In what ways do contributors participate in key technologies Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons?

A majority of the 879 responding contributors have participated by looking at Wikidata pages (73%) and editing Wikidata (74%), and have linked to Wikidata from other Wikimedia projects (71%).

About half (54%) reported integrating information from Wikidata into Wikipedia (PR24).

Fewer contributors have written queries in the Wikidata engine (27%), uploaded at least one data set to Wikidata (29%), explained Wikidata to other Wikimedians (23%), or explained Wikidata to non-Wikimedians (19%). The least selected options were having facilitated a partnership (6%) and having no experience with Wikidata (2%). It would be important to examine how editors who have different levels of contribution respond to this question.

Most of the 373 users of Wikimedia Commons reported that they add images to Wikipedia articles (94%) and that they upload images to Commons (84%) (PR28).

Several users reported editing images and other files on Commons (56%). 41% reported using images and files to illustrate things they work on outside of Wikimedia. The least selected options were organizing content on Commons (18%) and using images and files on other websites that are not part of Wikimedia (16%).

2. What are the opinions of contributors about Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons as well as community practices that influence these programs?

Contributors seem to spend time in contributing to Wikidata, but some may not find it to be the most valuable use of their time (PR25). Respondents agreed they can easily explain the value of Wikidata to a friend or relative who has never edited Wikidata.

Contributors agreed less with the statements that contributing to Wikidata is one of the most valuable uses of their time, and about knowing enough about Wikidata to form opinions about its future. Interestingly, contributors agreed less with being able to easily explain how Wikidata works to a friend who edits Wikipedia, than with explaining it to someone who has never edited Wikipedia. This question has not been tested for statistical significance.

Wikimedians agreed with Wikidata having potential for integrating knowledge with other organizations (mean = 4.28). With the statement that having multilingual data in Wikidata helps community resolve challenges (mean = 4.32). They agreed that applying Wikidata to other projects will strengthen the projects in the ecosystem (mean = 4.34) (PR27). Fewer Wikimedians agreed that the Wikidata community embraces standards for reliability and verifiability.

From the negatively worded statements, the highest was that the data collected on Wikidata lacks quality; followed by Wikidata interfaces being too challenging. It is important to note that this question went to all contributors. We filtered based on those who have contributed to Wikidata at least once in the last 12 months. Which may have introduced some bias. For example, This question does not include users who are aware of Wikidata, but have not interacted with it in the last 12 months.

We compared this data across high-activity and low-activity contributors. By years of experience and whether the users were beginners or advanced users. Among high-activity editors there seems to have been a difference between beginners and advanced users of Wikidata. Those who were more advanced were more inclined to agree with Wikidata having great potential to link knowledge from other organizations. They were also more inclined to agree that applying structured data from Wikidata would help the Wikimedia project ecosystem overall.

The most often selected features for Wikimedia Commons for both high- and low-activity editors were wanting better support of multilingual descriptions of media files and wanting to easily discover new or unexpected media to illustrate other Wikimedia projects (PR30). Both were around 25%.

3. What are the current attitudes towards the Education program in the Wikimedia movement?

Most contributors are not sure or have not noticed editors who are contributing through an Education Program (PR31). From contributors on the projects, 43% have noticed contributors from editors who are contributing through an assignment for school or university. 55% were either not sure or have not noticed these kinds of editors.

From contributors familiar with school assignments on Wikipedia, a majority agree that students make valuable contributors to Wikimedia projects (PR32). From 192 contributors who mentioned that they noticed contributors doing work as a school assignment, 67% agree or strongly agree that students worldwide in school or university make valuable contributions to the Wikimedia projects. About 9% of contributors "Disagreed" or "Strongly disagreed". 25% "Neither agree nor disagree".

4. What is the contributor awareness about, knowledge about and participation in Community Programs?

A majority of contributors have not heard of The Wikipedia Library (PR07). About a quarter (26%) of 466 contributors reported having heard of The Wikipedia Library. 74% have not heard of it before.

Program organizers reported most often participating in, using, or reading the GLAM Newsletter, Outreach wiki, and the Wikipedia & Education Facebook Group (PR29). The channels that were selected fairly often were The Wikipedia Library Facebook group and The Wikipedia Library pages on the local wiki, the Education mailing list, Wikidata+GLAM] Facebook group, the GLAM public mailing list, GLAM Wiki Global Facebook group, and the Learning Patterns library. The channels least read or used were the libraries mailing list, the Program Evaluation and Design Facebook group, and the cultural partners' mailing list.

5. What are the support needs for those who organize Wikimedia programs?

Outreach & Networking

More than half of program organizers connect with fewer than four people about organizing Wikimedia programs (PR37). Almost half of program leaders (46%) reported connecting with four or more people. About 40% reported connecting with one to three people. 14% reported not having connected with anyone.

Many affiliate organizers who are also program leaders feel most comfortable explaining edit-a-thons and editing workshops (PR21). Several are comfortable with the Wikipedia Education program, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikipedians-in-Residence, GLAM content donations, other photo events, and on-wiki writing contests. Fewer report being able to explain Wiki Loves Earth, hackathons, research projects, WikiExpeditions and Wikitakes. This question was not shown to program leaders only, due to errors in the survey flow.

Training Resources & Support

Attending trainings provided by community members or affiliates have helped program organizers the most in being successful (PR36).

Many program leaders (108) reported that attending a training provided by community members or affiliates helped them become successful in implementing Wikimedia programs. Other frequently selected support or learning opportunities that helped with their success included assisting someone else in Wikimedia in running a program, experience gained during job or schooling, and learning from support guides or materials on the wiki.

Fewer program leaders selected developing their own tactics, attending Wikimedia events where they learned about projects, learning support/materials provided by the Foundation, and assisting someone else outside of Wikimedia in running a program.

For the next 12 months, many program organizers reported they want to help with Edit-a-thons, content uploads to Wikimedia Commons, and training other experts, such as academics or researchers (PR23). Selected less often was support of education program assignments in universities, photography campaigns, Wikidata contributions from a partner, Wikipedian-in-residence positions, training of GLAM or volunteers, support of education program activities at non-University levels, communication or outreach campaigns and outreach related to free and open copyright.

In the next 12 months, program organizers would like to have outreach materials, training to implement specific projects, documentation of best practices, more communications support, case studies, and connections with outside experts (PR35). Fewer people selected helping to develop new software, and help to share their experience.

Future Work

Program organizers are planning to work on Education, GLAM, Photography and Gender thematic areas the most in the next 12 months (PR33). Fewer reported working on marginalized or indigenous knowledge and languages, STEM, other culture and heritage work, research access and medicine and health.

For Wikimedia affiliates, the most often mentioned area for future partnerships are Governments, Educational institutions and Museums (LE31). Additional partners include Institutional (30), Libraries (24), Companies/Tech Companies (23), GLAM (22), Tech (19), Archives (16), National (14), Local (14), and Cultural (12).

Organizational Support

On average, 60% of program organizers are satisfied with the support to thematic areas related to their programs (PR38). The median satisfaction rating across 9 thematic areas is 61%. Areas with the highest satisfaction include photography, research access, education and GLAM. Areas with the highest dissatisfaction are medicine & health, marginalized or indigenous knowledge, and other cultural or heritage work.

Program organizers selected funding as their most important support form the Foundation or Wikimedia affiliates (PR34). Other areas that were selected often was working with other Wikimedia Affiliates, negotiating partnership with other organizations, building tools or technology to support programs, and developing communication strategies. Areas selected the least often were finding mentorship from other program leaders, finding best practices for my program, and running online communications campaigns.

Most useful results

(Forthcoming)

Next steps

(Forthcoming)