[Foundation-l] WMF and UNU-Merit announce first survey of Wikipedians

Fri Jan 25 02:31:57 UTC 2008

I apologize for the previous email, which was sent inadvertently.

In a message dated 1/24/2008 8:08:07 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
jwalsh at wikimedia.org writes:

Hi folks  - keeping you informed,

Earlier today we made an announcement in  concert with the Collaborative 
Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT [a joint research  and training centre of United 
Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht  University] about the first ever 
survey of  Wikipedians.

Thanks for this message. It could be argued that people have surveyed  
Wikipedians privately before (I just received an email this morning from someone  
conducting a survey of Wikipedians), but this seems to be the first such survey  
under the aegis of the WMF.

As such, it raises man interesting questions, the chief of which for me is:  
"How is 'Wikipedian' defined?" In Hebrew, the word for definition is 
"hagdarah,"  from the root "gader," or fence. In other words, when you define 
something, you  put a fence around it, defining what is inside and what is out. When 
conducting  a survey of Wikipedians, you are similarly determining "Who is in" 
and "Who is  out."

Since you are very new to the community, I am sure Erik has informed you  
that this definition has long been debated on mailing lists, at meetings of  
staff and chapter leaders, at Wikimanias, and in various other fora. One such  
argument, which immediately comes to mind, was an email by Sj about two years  
ago, in which he suggested a very inclusive definition (from the pipes to the  
minarets, as he put it). Others, myself included, sought something a tad more  
exclusive. To the best of my knowledge, this issue was never  resolved.

Perhaps that is because in an open project, such as Wikipedia, the  
boundaries are so fluid. Are staff considered Wikipedians? What about people who  left 
the project, but who were largely responsible for establishing its  
infrastructure? What about trolls (Willie on Wheels has a hell of a lot of  edits)? What 
about metapedians, who deal with policies, but have very few edits?  What 
about critics, particularly critics who come from within the community? In  the 
English Wikipedia there is often a debate as to whether Jimmy himself is  part 
of the community or not--I do not know if the same debate occurs in other  
projects. While one might answer cynically that it all depends on what is  
convenient at the moment, the fact is that there is a certain fluidity of  
boundaries which must be taken into account. 

Having rambled on about this, I am, again, curious to understand how you  
define community for the purposes of this survey? Nor is this just a  
philosophical issue; there are practical ramifications as well. For instance,  when Imran 
and I organized the first community board elections, we had to  determine who 
could vote--in other words, we had to determine who the community  was. The 
result was only partially successful, as there were many exceptions to  
consider (could developers vote, for instance). In fact, at that time there was  some 
effort to distinguish between "Contributing Active Members" and "Volunteer  
Users," whatever that meant. Only much later did the Board decide to  abandon 
these definitions--and the principle of membership--entirely.

It seems to me that by conducting a survey such as this, of  Wikipedians, all 
of these issues have been resolved. So, for purposes of  clarification, how 
is Wikipedian being defined in his poll?

I apologize for the length of this post, but I believe that all these  qu
estions merit answers.

Danny

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