Community Insights/Community Insights 2021 Report

2021 Community Insights Report

• Executive Summary
• Brand Awareness
• Platform Evolution
• Thriving Movement
• Survey Methodology
• Endnotes
• Supplement: Collaboration, Diversity & Inclusion
• Community Insights Home

In late 2020, the Global Data & Insights team (formerly Learning & Evaluation) collected data from more than 2500 Wikimedians from all over the world through the Community Insights survey. These data help paint a picture of our Movement's demographics and communities' social and technical experiences. They also tell us whether we are progressing towards the Wikimedia Foundation’s Medium Term Plan goals and the 2030 Strategic Direction.

While the last year saw some gains in gender representation, we still struggle to attract – and especially retain – contributors from diverse geographies and other backgrounds.

• Although women were still markedly underrepresented among contributors, there was a modest increase in women contributors between 2019 and 2020. Learn more.

• Black and Hispanic or Latino/a/x people were dramatically underrepresented among contributors based in the United States. The same is true for Asian or Asian British and Black or Black British people among contributors based in Great Britain. Learn more.
• We are better at attracting contributors from diverse geographies than we are at retaining them. While newcomers were far more likely to live in Africa, Asia, or Latin America than more tenured contributors, we have seen no improvement in the geographic diversity of those tenured editors since 2019. Learn more.

New contributors and movement organizers feel more empowered to succeed in their respective roles than they did in 2019.

• Newcomer empowerment increased overall, but especially among women or those who live in East Asia – groups who felt significantly less empowerment than others in 2019. Learn more.
• Movement organizers' empowerment increased, as did their feelings of support from their communities or affiliates. Learn more.

Those in East Asia still have consistently worse technical and social experiences on-wiki than others, though this gap shrunk in the last year.

• Contributors in East Asia continue to have lower technical satisfaction than others, as well as worse feelings of project engagement and movement belonging – though belonging has improved over the last year. Learn more.
• While contributors to the Chinese language Wikipedia continue to be far more likely to feel unsafe in Wikimedia spaces than others, contributors to the Japanese language Wikipedia are half as likely to have felt unsafe as they were in 2019. Learn more.

Contributors have slightly improved awareness of and confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation than they did in 2019. Learn more.

This report is authored by the Global Data & Insights team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Data is graciously provided by our committed communities, keeping the Wikimedia projects alive, providing free knowledge to the world.