Wikipedia Survey
Wikimania Buenos Aires
26 August 2009
Collaborative Creativity Group
United Nations University MERIT
Rishab Ghosh, Ruediger Glott, Philipp Schmidt
http://ccg.merit.unu.edu
schmidt@merit.unu.edu

BACKGROUND
• Wikimedia Foundation &
United Nations University MERIT
• First official Wikipedia survey (for readers and
contributors)
• Questionnaire developed with community
input and building on existing research
• Translated into 22 languages by Wikipedia
community

BACKGROUND
• Online survey hosted at MERIT. Code reviewed
by WP technical community
• Survey went live November 2008
• Link to survey was posted in page headers of
WP sites
• Staggered across different language editions
to deal with traffic loads

RESEARCH QUESTIONS / OBJECTIVES
• Who is contributing to Wikipedia and how?
• Who is using Wikipedia?
• What are users' and contributors' perceptions
of quality?
• Pragmatic findings that help the WMF improve
use and benefits.
• Establish baseline for possible monitoring
system (panel studies)

SCOPE
• Questionnaire contains 50+ questions (with
sub-questions) on a broad variety of topics
and is broken down into sections:
– General, Contributing, Reading, Non-contributors,
Ex-contributors
• 310,000 users/contributors accessed the
survey
• 175,000 valid responses

ANALYSIS
• Extensive data cleaning (removed more than
3500 cases)
• First sub-reports shared with WMF
– Survey Overview (available via blog)
– Non-contributors (for WMF presentation)
– Quality

ANALYSIS - NEXT STEPS
• August 2009 – Share moderately anonymized
data with WMF and make available additional
sub-reports
• November 2009 – Publish comprehensive
survey report (including all sub-reports)
• Post publication – Open access to all fully
anonymized data

LANGUAGE EDITION SURVEYS
• 22 languages (incl. 2 surveys for chinese)
• Started with largest language editions
• Added further editions based on interest by
WMF, availability of volunteer translators, and
diversity of sample
• Top 5 language editions ~ 80% respondents
• Russian largest group (tested against
manipulation)

LANGUAGE EDITION SURVEYS

LOCATION
• Responses
from 231
countries

USER/ACTIVITY TYPES
• Readers 66%
Contributors 31%
• Contributors:
4 hrs / week
• Additional
categorization
based on focus
areas

AGE
• Quartile: 18 yrs - 22 yrs - 30 yrs - 85 yrs
Type Avg Age
All respondents 25.22
Readers 24.79
Contributors 26.14
Female 23.79
Male 25.69

GENDER
• Gender by user type
• Female: 30% readers, 12.5% contributors

EDUCATION
• High levels of education (esp. given avg ages)
• Contributors slightly higher than readers
(~ 50% with tertiary education)

MOTIVATIONS TO CONTRIBUTE
• Ranked motivations (1st - 4th)

REASONS FOR NOT CONTRIBUTING

HOW TO INCREASE CONTRIBUTION
• I would be much likelier to contribute, if …

FOCUS AREAS AND EXPERTISE
• Culture & Arts most popular, Technology &
Applied Sciences (then History, Geography)
• 70-90% of contributors self-identify as
“experts”
• Highest shares of experts in technical and
scientific fields
• Focus areas do not correspond perfectly with
expertise levels. “Geography & Places”
attracts high levels of contributors, but
comparatively low levels of expertise.

FOCUS AREAS AND EXPERTISE

PERCEPTIONS OF QUALITY
• Quality compared to “traditional”
encyclopedia
– Reliability (only category where “traditional”
received higher scores)
– Broadness
– Variety
– Depth
– Understandability
– Timeliness
• Compare reader and contributor responses

QUALITY - RELIABILITY
• The information provided is correct

QUALITY - DEPTH
• The information provides deep understanding
of a topic

QUALITY - VARIETY
• A wide range of topics is dealt with

PERCEPTIONS OF QUALITY
• Contributors are both more critical
(reliability, understandability) and more
supportive (all other dimensions) than
readers.
• Relationship between transparency,
understanding of the processes and
mechanisms, and perception of quality.

ANNEX – ADDITIONAL TABLES

MOTIVATIONS TO CONTRIBUTE

REASONS FOR NOT CONTRIBUTING