Access paths to Free Knowledge

Background

Previous WMDE activities and campaigns to recruit new volunteers have revealed recurring questions. Within our campaigns many people show interest in participating in Wikipedia, but only a few ever follow through with future participation. Some of the questions are: Why is the retention rate so low? Do we have to create better customized offers for a more specific target audience or do potential newbies just need more or different learning options in the beginning?

The goal of this research study is to gain, from your answers, insights for the better design of future activities to successfully attract new volunteers to Wikimedia projects.

Factors that influence the “how and why” of existing community members contributing to the Wikimedia projects long-term are to be identified. The aim is to learn about the personal experiences of those involved in the Wikimedia-projects. From there we want to develop new starter and participation modules for the newbies.

Project description

Active Community members will be interviewed in order to find answers to the above formulated questions. We basically want to learn about the project success stories, finding out how you started participating in the project, which factors motivated you to commit and what the actual work in the projects look like. For this we’re looking for active members of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, that are interested in participating in this research study. The interviews will include different perspectives, such as project activity, length of membership and demographic criteria.

At the same time there’ll be another survey sent to those not yet involved in any of the Wikimedia projects, with intent to find out which factors would motivate them to join a project. Those participants will be recruited by Mandalah.

Participate

You’re an active member of Wikipedia, Wikidata and/or Wikimedia Commons and keen on participating in our study? Then take the first step and fill out this preliminary survey. The survey can be completed until 26th of June 2020. The interview partners will be picked based on the results of this survey. All chosen interviewees will go through two steps:

Self-reflection via the online platform Miro (ca. 40 min.)
Interview with two researchers from the agency Mandalah (ca. 105 - 120 min.) between 15.06. - 26.07.2020 (closed)

As a thank you for your time all interviewed partners will receive a book or photo shop voucher for the amount of €25. Vouchers only sent after all member interviews of the study are finished. Additionally, all participants will be informed of the study results.

Privacy and Data Protection

As part of the preliminary survey, the self-reflection query and the interview process, personal information will be collected (e.g. name/user name and e-mail address). This data will be used for evaluation purposes only and made available to the research team, consisting of the Mandalah user researchers as well as the supporting WMDE employees.

The research results will be published following the study and made fully anonymous. All collected details will be deleted after the study. All participants have the right to revoke their permission to process their personal data at all times. The withdrawal-option and a detailed list of the collected information can be found in the privacy statements:

Declaration of consent for preliminary survey

Declaration of consent for the whole project

Schedule

Recruitment process and completion of preliminary survey: 15. - 26. June

Interview process: 15. June - 3. July

Evaluation process: 6. July - 31. July

Final results available: probably by the end of July 2020

Wikipedia:Wikimedia Deutschland/Neue Ehrenamtliche/Recherche/Access paths to free knowledge