Research:Portuguese Wikipedia trends and behavior

Contact

Jessie Wild

WMF

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Research:Projects

This page documents a completed research project.

Key Personnel

The research is funded and led by the WMF, with the help of a few contractors. Participants include:

• Fabian Kaelin is a Master of Science candidate from McGill University, focused on machine learning
• Daniela Feijó, Qualitative Researcher (see: RFP) is a sociologist and political scientist from Porto Alegre, Brazil
• Jessie Wild (WMF)
• Siko Bouterse (WMF)
• Maryana Pinchuk (WMF)
• Steven Walling (WMF)

Project Summary

To measure the current state of the Portuguese Wikipedia (PT:WP) community by answering a basic set of questions about editor statistics and trends. The goals are:

1. to better understand the overall community health of PT:WP
2. to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the current PT:WP process and interactions
3. to identify a set of community organizing actions that are most likely to improve editor retention/engagement and overall community health

Background Information

In December 2010, the Brazil Catalyst Project (BCP) began which developed open, documented and collaborative approaches through which the Wikimedia Foundation could support Wikimedia projects community in Brazil, with the goal of growing the contributor community and readership in Brazil. Ultimately, the project focused on creating a set of recommendations for initiatives and pilot projects that would help advance our collective mission in Brazil and generating systems, processes, and methods for advancing Wikimedia in other geographic areas. One outcome of the project was that there is a great need to improve the understanding of the structure and work dynamics of the Brazilian community in general and the Portuguese Wikipedia specifically.

Scope of work

The Quantitative Research will begin with a focus on the Editor Trends Study (for Portuguese) and then move into more specific areas regarding admin activity, new editor activity, and general editing stats. In parallel, a Qualitative Researcher will work on informing the quantitative work with specific community knowledge and provide insight into the actual causes of emerging trends.

Six themes are to be addressed during this research:

1. General Editor Trends
2. Social Structure
3. Reverts and Article Deletion
4. Discussion, Consensus & Dispute Processes
5. Policy
6. New Editor Experience

Benefits for the Wikimedia community

The work will help to summarize the:

1. General profile / factbase of current PT:WP
2. Scope and nature of editor decline in PT:WP
3. Structure and dynamics of PT:WP community

These results will be synthesized, and suggested changes will be tested and recommended to the broader community.

Funding

WMF, as it is part of the Brazil Catalyst Project work.

Preliminary results

• October 2011: PT:WP Editor Trends
• Suggestions

See also

• This page at the Portuguese Wikipedia
• Brazil Readers Survey 2011
• Portuguese Huggle Experiment
• Research on the impact of message templates on editor retention