Research:Tech support satisfaction poll
From Oct 15 to Oct 22, 2015, the Community Tech team conducted a poll across 10 different Wikimedia projects to ask core community members how satisfied they were with the technical support provided by the WMF to their project.
Purpose
This survey is very limited in scope and is only intended to act as a temperature gauge of community satisfaction. It is not intended to find solutions to technical support problems. (That task will be covered by future surveys such as the Community Wishlist survey.) The poll will be repeated periodically and the results compared over time in order to see if community satisfaction is improving, declining, or staying the same.
Participant selection
The poll surveyed core community members on 10 different projects:
- English Wikipedia
- German Wikipedia
- French Wikipedia
- Russian Wikipedia
- Chinese Wikipedia
- Spanish Wikipedia
- Arabic Wikipedia
- Portuguese Wikipedia
- Japanese Wikipedia
- Wikimedia Commons
Participants were randomly selected from a pool, based on the following qualifications:
- Account is at least 1 year old
- Prolific active contributor in content namespaces or active contributor in technical namespaces
See T107829 for more specific details on selection.
Hosting
This survey was hosted by Qualtrics.
Questions
See Special:MyLanguage/Research:Tech support satisfaction poll/Questions
FAQ
How were the ten projects selected?
Four of the projects are the top language projects by article count; five are "strategic" languages, i.e. languages with a large number of internet users (see http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm); Commons was also included as it is one of the largest and most active projects and has unique technical needs. See T107829 for further discussion.
Why weren't all projects included?
Mostly because of logistical and resource limitations. For example, translating survey questions into 200+ languages is extremely difficult even with volunteer support. This is not intended to be a comprehensive survey, just a temperature gauge, so the benefit of including the long tail of projects would probably not justify the additional effort and expense required.
Why can't I submit more detailed answers?
The purpose of this poll is to act as a temperature gauge of community satisfaction. It is not intended to find solutions to technical support problems. Keep in mind that we will be conducting more in-depth surveys over the coming year. If you feel the need to share an idea with us now, feel free to post on the talk page here.
Results
Demographics
| Project | Respondents |
|---|---|
| Russian Wikipedia | 60 |
| German Wikipedia | 58 |
| Chinese Wikipedia | 53 |
| Spanish Wikipedia | 51 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 50 |
| English Wikipedia | 47 |
| Arabic Wikipedia | 38 |
| Japanese Wikipedia | 37 |
| Portuguese Wikipedia | 37 |
| French Wikipedia | 36 |
| Total | 467 |
| Years active | Respondents |
|---|---|
| 1 year or less | 69 |
| 2-3 years | 85 |
| 4-6 years | 137 |
| 7-10 years | 143 |
| 11 years or more | 31 |
Meeting technical needs
The following results were in response to the question:
Do you feel the Wikimedia Foundation is meeting the technical needs for Wikipedia contributors in the following areas?
By type
| Type of technical need | Not at all | Slightly | Moderately | Mostly | Completely | Mostly + Completely | Total N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reviewing recent changes | 6% | 15% | 25% | 35% | 18% | 53% | 390 |
| Reviewing new articles | 8% | 14% | 26% | 36% | 17% | 52% | 377 |
| Identifying and surfacing content problems | 12% | 19% | 34% | 27% | 8% | 35% | 391 |
| Supporting WikiProjects | 9% | 22% | 27% | 26% | 16% | 42% | 360 |
| Managing media | 6% | 16% | 23% | 33% | 22% | 54% | 372 |
| Working with templates | 8% | 17% | 26% | 32% | 18% | 49% | 392 |
| Categorizing content | 8% | 14% | 27% | 33% | 18% | 51% | 402 |
| Supporting gadgets, bots, and 3rd party tools | 9% | 20% | 25% | 31% | 15% | 46% | 373 |
| Total counts per column | 256 | 521 | 815 | 964 | 501 | 1465 | 3057 |
| Aggregate score | 8% | 17% | 27% | 32% | 16% | 48% |
Across all the technical areas, 48% feel that WMF is mostly or completely meeting the technical needs of Wikipedia/Commons contributors. In looking at the individual technical areas, 54% or less of the respondents chose "mostly" or "completely" for any one technical area. The areas with the lowest "completely" or "mostly" scores were "Identifying and surfacing content problems", "Supporting WikiProjects", and "Supporting Gadgets, bots and 3rd party Tools".
By project
| Project | Not at all | Slightly | Moderately | Mostly | Completely | Mostly + Completely |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian Wikipedia | 6% | 11% | 23% | 40% | 20% | 60% |
| French Wikipedia | 12% | 16% | 20% | 33% | 18% | 51% |
| Portuguese Wikipedia | 8% | 16% | 25% | 34% | 17% | 51% |
| English Wikipedia | 12% | 14% | 22% | 37% | 15% | 51% |
| German Wikipedia | 10% | 14% | 24% | 35% | 16% | 51% |
| Arabic Wikipedia | 5% | 19% | 27% | 29% | 20% | 49% |
| Spanish Wikipedia | 9% | 15% | 28% | 30% | 17% | 48% |
| Chinese Wikipedia | 4% | 21% | 31% | 29% | 16% | 44% |
| Wikimedia Commons | 11% | 23% | 28% | 25% | 13% | 38% |
| Japanese Wikipedia | 8% | 25% | 41% | 17% | 9% | 26% |
In looking at the individual projects, 60% or less of the respondents chose "mostly" or "completely" for any project. The projects with the lowest "completely" or "mostly" scores are Japanese Wikipedia (26%), Wikimedia Commons (38%), and Chinese Wikipedia (44%). The project with the highest scores are Russian Wikipedia with 60% rating as "mostly" or "completely", and English, German, Portuguese and French Wikipedia all came in second, with ratings of 51% as "mostly" or "completely".
By years editing/contributing
| Years active | Not at all | Slightly | Moderately | Mostly | Completely |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year or less | 7% | 16% | 27% | 31% | 19% |
| 2-3 years | 5% | 11% | 26% | 34% | 24% |
| 4-6 years | 6% | 17% | 28% | 34% | 16% |
| 7-10 years | 11% | 22% | 25% | 30% | 12% |
| 11 years or more | 22% | 16% | 29% | 21% | 11% |
In doing a crosstabulation of number of years editing/contributing in the Wikimedia movement with overall scores of support in the technical areas, we find that there is a trend with how long an editor has been part of the movement and whether they feel the WMF is meeting technical needs. We can see that 50% of respondents with 1 year or less of service felt that WMF is "mostly" or "completely" meeting their needs. In contrast, only 36% of respondents with 11 years or more of service felt that WMF is "mostly" or "completely" meeting their needs.
Other areas that are important
The following results were in response to the question:
What other areas, if any, are missing from the list above which are important to you?
Results coming soon...
Satisfaction with WMF technical support
The following results were in response to the question:
How satisfied are you overall with the technical support provided by the Wikimedia Foundation to Wikipedia?
By project
| Project | Very satisfied | Satisfied | Neither | Dissatisfied | Very dissatisfied | % Satisfied | % Neither | % Dissatisfied |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian Wikipedia | 8 | 28 | 18 | 4 | 2 | 60% | 30% | 10% |
| English Wikipedia | 9 | 19 | 12 | 4 | 3 | 60% | 26% | 15% |
| Portuguese Wikipedia | 3 | 19 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 59% | 32% | 8% |
| Spanish Wikipedia | 7 | 22 | 14 | 7 | 0 | 58% | 28% | 14% |
| Arabic Wikipedia | 6 | 16 | 11 | 5 | 0 | 58% | 29% | 13% |
| German Wikipedia | 8 | 19 | 12 | 12 | 4 | 49% | 22% | 29% |
| French Wikipedia | 3 | 13 | 17 | 1 | 2 | 44% | 47% | 8% |
| Chinese Wikipedia | 4 | 19 | 20 | 8 | 1 | 44% | 38% | 17% |
| Wikimedia Commons | 4 | 8 | 23 | 9 | 5 | 24% | 47% | 29% |
| Japanese Wikipedia | 3 | 5 | 23 | 5 | 1 | 22% | 62% | 16% |
| Total | 55 | 168 | 162 | 58 | 18 | 48% | 16% | 35% |
In examining overall Satisfaction, we find that 48% of respondents were satisfied with the technical support that WMF provides, while 35% are dissatisfied. Projects where respondents were most satisfied was Russian, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic, where satisfaction ranged from 58% to 60%. Projects where respondents were least satisfied (by % satisfaction) were Japanese Wikipedia (22%) and Wikimedia Commons (24%). The projects with the highest proportion dissatisfied was German Wikipedia (29%) and Wikimedia Commons (29%).
By years editing/contributing
| Years active | Very satisfied | Satisfied | Neither | Dissatisfied | Very dissatisfied | % Satisfied | % Neither | % Dissatisfied |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year or less | 13 | 22 | 22 | 9 | 1 | 52% | 33% | 15% |
| 2-3 years | 14 | 42 | 21 | 5 | 2 | 67% | 25% | 8% |
| 4-6 years | 17 | 54 | 50 | 13 | 2 | 52% | 37% | 11% |
| 7-10 years | 10 | 43 | 60 | 24 | 6 | 37% | 42% | 21% |
| 11 years or more | 1 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 26% | 29% | 45% |
In examining satisfaction and the number of years editing or contributing, we find a similar trend to the technical needs. The overall satisfaction level by age decreases as the number of years active on Wikimedia projects increases. Satisfaction ranges from 26% (for 11 years or more) to 67% (for 2-3 years).