Research:Volunteer Archetypes
In support of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission to nurture multiple generations of volunteers, a pillar of the 2024-25 annual plan, the Volunteer Archetypes research project aimed to study the motivations and practices of online volunteers who are not currently represented in our movement. Archetypes sought to identify motivational patterns among these non-Wikimedian volunteers and to present WMF leadership with opportunities, or "value propositions," that might be effective at enticing certain types of non-Wikimedian volunteers to contribute to our projects.
The final output of this research can be seen in the V2 Archetypes cards—a series of "persona-like" informational profiles of volunteer archetypes that describe contributors' motivational patterns in conjunction with other information about the ways they contribute their time and skills in online spaces. These cards also present information about archetypes' measured relationships with Wikipedia. These Archetypes will are intended to help WMF teams better be able to talk about—and talk to—their varied constituencies, and to begin catering more effectively to different kinds of volunteers by orienting to the different value propositions that attract them.
Methods
editThis project is organized around a survey distributed to people who indicate some degree of online contribution without being paid in return; i.e., some form of online "volunteering."
Through a process of internal consultations with project stakeholders, the WMF Design team, and the WMF Research team, we settled on asking respondents about the following forms of contribution:
- Participating in community or citizen science projects (e.g., iNaturalist, eBird)
- Submitting reviews (e.g., Google Maps, Local Guides, Yelp)
- Providing help or answering questions (e.g., Facebook groups, Quora, Reddit, Discord servers)
- Community moderation (e.g., subreddits, Discord channels, or similar)
- Contributing to open-source software projects (e.g., Wikipedia, GitHub, OpenStreetMap, etc.)
- Liking or sharing posts on social media
- Posting in hobby- or interest-based communities (music, art, photography, design, gaming, etc.)
- Promoting or supporting social, political, or cultural causes
- Academic volunteering (e.g., course creation, tutoring)
- Online organizing of events (virtual meetups, gaming events, film festivals, art shows, etc.)
- Preserving or documenting cultural heritage (digitizing documents, artifacts, underrepresented groups, etc.)
- Other (please state): [text entry]
After progressing through a screener survey, qualified respondents were asked to "select all" of the above contribution forms they engage in, and in a subsequent screen are asked to select which of their choices is "the most important" to them. After this, they respond to a number of questions about their motivations, behaviors, and beliefs around their "most important" form of contribution. They are also asked questions about their relationship to Wikipedia.
Factor analysis was applied to responses to the motivation statements, identifying 5 "core motivations" (i.e., latent motivation variables) among online contributor participants, namely:
- Social Good, combining responses to the statements
- I want to change other people's incorrect opinions or behaviors
- Engaging and sharing opinions with others
- Sharing knowledge about social issues I care about
- Helping my language be better represented online
- Sharing knowledge about my community or culture
- Reducing bias in online spaces
- Fun & Community, combining
- It's fun
- I’m passionate about the things I spend my time on
- I like sharing my time and skills with others
- It helps me escape boredom
- I have made friends by contributing
- Having my contributions recognized positively by others
- I feel like I’m part of a community of like-minded people
- Sharing my passion or expertise about a subject
- Exchanging skills with others
- Benefits, combining
- I make money from some of my contributions
- Becoming better at writing, researching, or coding
- Contributing is part of my schoolwork or employment
- Contributing can help my career
- Helping my language be better represented online
- Fulfillment, combining
- It gives me a sense of accomplishment
- I like fixing things
- I like that my contribution helps others
- I like mentoring or teaching others
- and Controlling Others, combining
- I like making other people say or do things I want
- I want to punish others who engage in unwelcome behaviors or comments on the internet
- I want to get even with people who made me mad on the internet
At the same time, analysis also focused on responses to a similar array of motivation statements that were posed to Wikimedia contributors as part of the 2024 Community Insights survey, administered in the Spring of 2024. Factor analysis identified 4 "core motivations" (i.e., latent motivations) among Wikimedians.
While the V1 work was focused exclusively on English speakers, V2 expanded to include responses from users of Arabic, Spanish, and French.
Results
editAn example of a completed V2 Archetype card can be seen here.
This research shows that online volunteers' contribution behaviors are mediated in part by their motivations to contribute. Their relationships with Wikipedia are likewise related to their contribution motivations. Broadly speaking, we have found that respondents who self-select into what we are considering to be "generalized" forms of online contribution, i.e.,
- Submitting reviews (e.g., Google Maps, Local Guides, Yelp),
- Providing help or answering questions (e.g., Facebook groups, Quora, Reddit, Discord servers), and
- Liking or sharing posts on social media,
generally tend of "behave" differently than respondents who self-select into more "specialized" forms of contribution, which include the remaining 8 contribution types listed above. Specialist contributors tend to spend more effort on their chosen contribution form, report different and stronger motivations to do it, and report a different and stronger relationship with Wikipedia. Furthermore, a respondent's choice of individual contribution form tends to be associated with patterns of motivation and behavior as measured elsewhere in the survey. "Hobby posters," for example, tend to be motivated by factors such as fun and community, while "social cause promoters" tend to be motivated to contributed by positivist social values. Open-Source Software contributors, on the other hand, tend to be motivated by a desire to accrue tangible benefits from their contribution, and they also display a deeper level of knowledge about the way Wikipedia functions.
Timeline
editThe first version of this research (V1) was completed in mid-July, 2024. It resulted in the elaboration of 6 volunteer archetypes, and was presented by the WMF Design team at Wikimania 2024 in Poland.
The second version (V2) represents an extension of V1, and concluded in January, 2025. V2 extended V1 by strengthening the empirical basis of the Archetypes, including input from online contributors who speak French, Spanish, and Arabic, and providing more nuance in the way that respondents' contribution behaviors and Wikipedia relationships are measured. V2 resulted in the elaboration of 5 external and 4 internal Archetypes.
Results
editThe V1 Archetypes cards can be viewed and downloaded on Wikimedia Commons. V2 Archetypes can be seen here.