Grants talk:IEG/WikiProject X

Love the idea to use what's working for some to improve the experience for all

Thanks for writing this idea up, James! I'm really glad we got to spend some time brainstorming at Wikiconference USA :) Learning from what's working in the most active Wikiprojects and then using this to create and test a kit for Wikiprojects to improve the community-organizing experience for all feels like a very useful endeavor. Pinging the wub as I imagine he might be interested as well. And Mabeenot, who has been interviewing Wikiprojects for the Signpost for several years, could be a good person to include in a list of interviewees as well. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Updates for IEG & another connection suggestion

Hi James, I see you've moved this idea into an IEG proposal so I made some updates to your page to reflect the updated proposal format we're using this round. I'm also pinging User:WhatamIdoing, who I know has some useful thoughts and data-points on Wikiprojects that you might want to touch-base about as well!

Happy to give further input as you think about fleshing out a project plan further. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Siko.

A few years ago, I started wondering whether my anecdotal observations about success for newly created WikiProjects was accurate. I started collecting data on how active new WikiProjects were six months after creation, as measured by talk page comments. You can see how far I got in collecting data here. My goal was to find out two things: did the number of initial supporters/members matter (tentative answer: yes), and did the experience level of the proposer, as measured in age of account and number of edits as of the time the proposal was made, matter (I didn't get that far, but anecdotally, WikiProjects started by newbies are all failures).

One of my thoughts was that if we had some idea of what characteristics were likely to result in a failed WikiProject, then we might be able to convince the community to adopt recommendations for starting new ones, along the lines of "Please don't start a WikiProject unless you have made at least 100 edits yourself, because if you do, then your project is almost certainly going to fail".

I haven't gotten back to this since then, but I think that knowing when projects are likely to fail would be helpful to en.wp. It might also be useful for mid- and large-size Wikipedias that would like to have more WikiProjects (specifically, by helping them have a few successful ones rather than a bunch of failed ones). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, The wub, and Mabeenot: Now that the proposal is finished, please let me know what you think. Thanks! harej (talk) 23:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Finalize your proposal by October 1st!

Hi Harej. Thank you for drafting this proposal!

• Once you're ready to submit it for review, please update its status (in your page's Probox markup) from DRAFT to PROPOSED, as the deadline is September 30th.
• If you have any questions at all, feel free to contact me (IEG committee member) or Siko (IEG program head), or just post a note on this talk page and we'll see it.

Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 20:16, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Introducing volunteers

Hi! Great project you have here. Field research on what makes collaboration work is much needed, and it's a concrete proposal that could help reinvigorate the community, which has stalled in recent years.

I have some experience in knowledge management and interaction design. I don't think I'll have much time to participate in the project, but I would love to participate with some comments here and there about the research and design proposals. Diego Moya (talk) 15:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Oooooooh... and I've just learned that Appreciative inquiry has a Dream step. I would love to help with that, too! :-) Diego Moya (talk) 16:38, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Diego Moya! Very happy to have you on board as a volunteer. harej (talk) 23:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Confusing name

I'm not sure in what contexts the name "WikiProject X" will be used going forward, but I find it a very confusing name. There are a few things commonly referred to by the single-letter name "X" that this could be confused with (the X Window System being the one I immediately thought of). Would it be possible to change the name to something more meaningful? - dcljr (talk) 06:20, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I thought of Wikiproject Wikiprojects to reinforce the "meta" nature of this project, but that's not much better in terms of clarity. :-) How about "Wikiproject Drive" or "Wikiproject Impulse" to highlight the goal of community engagement? Alternatively some variation "Wikiproject Social" would emphasize the nature of community coordination, although "Social" is itself too broad. I don't know what the project initiators will think of a rename, as the choice of the name "X" is not explained. Diego Moya (talk) 08:32, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Familiar with previous research?

There's been quite a lot of research on WikiProjects. Can you please explain how you learn from and use the existing published research? Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 08:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Jodi.a.schneider, I would be happy to review the existing literature. Do you know where it has been published? harej (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

CSCW is a common venue. See also the Research:Newsletter. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 21:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree with this comment. I'm sure that I've taken part in surveys about my participation in Wikiprojects before, and representatives from various Wikiprojects have given presentations on good practices to Wikimania and other forums. This proposal appears to involve reinventing the wheel to some degree given that it's not currently informed by the results of previous surveys and presentations. Nick-D (talk) 02:00, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Outside Wikipedia

I think it is clear that the primary challenge WikiProjects face is that they're swimming upstream due to net editor attrition. We need to encourage projects to recruit new members from outside Wikipedia and not just ask existing editors to do more. Kvng (talk) 13:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Invertzoo (talk) 15:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Kvng and Invertzoo for your feedback. I know that WikiProject Medicine is regularly engaged with reaching out to the medical world outside of Wikipedia, and they are very organized in their work. Likewise, Keilana has promoted WikiProject Women Scientists at the in-person events she's held. So there are definitely things we can look at and try to replicate, though I am not sure they are options for every WikiProject. harej (talk) 19:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Three immodest proposals

With regard to the editing community involved in science articles at English Wikipedia, I agree that it needs to be reinvigorated. The vast majority of my active contributions toward editing articles (as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Flying_Jazz) were before projects became prevalent here, and my opinion is that the key to renewing the community is to return the encyclopedia to resemble that earlier time. Below are three immodest proposals to do that. I'm aware that the individuals I'm interacting with have little ability to implement these suggestions, but I think my viewpoint about these matters may provide information to you about the topic under discussion.

1) Disband all projects. The place worked better when each article (or list or category or template or whatever) had its own individual community on the article talk page. Many editors leave the community because of those who stay and become "Project Builders" instead of editors like everyone else. These project builders begin to feel a sense of entitlement, management, and ownership over entire swaths of human knowledge. The idea that individuals editors ought to feel an obligation to follow "best practices" because an article falls under the aegis of some project that has "established" those practices is a distasteful idea to people who wish to edit for the sake of improving the encyclopedia. This "WikiProject X" grant idea follows the petty middle-management fallacy that what's really needed to motivate people to feel that they're part of a community are more rules, more outside encouragement, branding, more control of social spaces, and the deployment of prototype workflows. If projects ceased to exist then it would indicate to me that Wikipedia was finally beginning to get out of the way and let knowledgeable editors edit without having to worry about nonsensical bureaucrat junk.

2) Cease all grants. There is little incentive for me to volunteer when indirect monetary rewards for my work are being granted to others. There is little incentive for me to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation when my funds are going to grants dealing with the implementation of schemes that have no direct connection to article improvement. We live in a world where people who do work are persistently exploited by executives, marketers, and managers. Wikipedia was once an outlet for those who wished to escape that world for a time in order to do work for its own joy without being exploited and with the knowledge that others were doing the same. Now this "WikiProject X" is asking for grant money to create branding solutions and identity mechanisms as tools to attract new recruits that will do the work of maintaining and improving the encyclopedia for free. Few knowledgeable editors create and maintain science articles compared to the old days because we see through the grant facade to recognize the same underlying managerial exploitation that exists in our everyday lives. It could have been a place where professors and global experts interacted with a worldwide community under a mutual spirit of volunteerism, but that can't happen now. From my perspective, the heart of Wikipedia stopped beating years ago, and it won't beat again until and unless these types of grants are halted. If there's work that a PR person, manager, or executive wants done, act like an editor and do it without a grant.

3) Ban more users. Persistent, tendentious editing by a minority discourages knowledgeable people from creating and maintaining factually correct and well-written content here. Administrators and whichever other bureaucrats are responsible for temporary and permanent bans should recognize that a huge number of people on the planet are either unwilling or unable to contribute to an encyclopedia in a rewarding and helpful way. Good editors leave because bad editors stay. Flying Jazz (talk) 14:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that there's an underlying assumption here that subject-area Wikiprojects are a good thing in general, something many people would take issue with. It's not very serious research if the conclusion is built into the assumptions. Gigs (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• I endorse every word of point 1. This proposal seems predicated on the idea that highly active WikiProjects are a positive, which is highly debatable. In my experience, all of the non-moribund projects (including the much-vaunted WikiProject Military History), invariably become cliques fighting petty turf-wars over minutiae of style, and are actively off-putting to casual Wikipedia editors. Iridescent (talk) 21:52, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• @Flying Jazz: That's quite an anarchist perspective you've retained! I think there are a lot of drawbacks in a return to completely de-centralised talk now the project is so large. Deletion of articles you care about but weren't watching is a common complaint. A project is the best way to mitigate this as even a small topic area can leave a watchlist overflowing. A request for an expert opinion on a talk page is much more likely to be missed (you can easily wait a few years). As the article base has grown, so has the importance of structuring it in way that helps navigation (consistent layout is as helpful to readers as it is burdensome to editors).
• That said, the establishment of needless rules, fiefdoms, and a culture of management over creation is problematic. As someone who has created a project, I would argue that WikiProjects aren't necessarily restrictive - it depends on the personalities involved. People's writing styles are very different and there's often not a lot of tolerance of that; it's a fine line between cleaning up messy bits/errors and imposing the "right way" of doing things. There are far more mechanisms to write rules than there are to foster tolerance between editors. Wikipedia attracts people who refuse to let go of little errors (that's often how editing starts). Sadly, this trait does not often come with an ability to stop, leave alone, and nurture other's work. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 00:23, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

To address a point that was raised, I wouldn't say highly active WikiProjects are inherently good things, nor do I endorse all the things they do. Just that to the extent that English Wikipedia is too big to have a site-wide community, it is worth looking into how WikiProjects can help facilitate some of that community building, particularly since they already exist and it's better to not have to re-invent the wheel. There are pitfalls to active WikiProjects—cliques, stifling bureaucracy and rules, enforcement of arbitrary guidelines—but it will be a net positive if this helps editors with their article writing or makes them feel like they are part of a community and not an uncaring wall of text. We will see if we can encourage pro-social behavior, rather than anti-social; I'd like to think of the Teahouse as a model worth emulating. harej (talk) 05:21, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Please clarify

Could you explain what you mean by, "to facilitate collaboration across subject areas". Do you mean that the various different projects should be collaborating with one another more than they do? Or do you mean something else, such as that people should collaborate within one project who are currently usually working on different subject areas? Invertzoo (talk) 15:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Invertzoo, that was clumsy wording on my part. I meant within subject areas. Sorry for the confusion! harej (talk) 19:21, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2014 begins on 21 October 2014, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Jtud (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Survey

This proposal mentions a survey, but doesn't cover some relevant aspects of this:

• How many respondents would you like to attract? (the proposal notes a minimum of 100, but this is way too few to produce statistically useful results - are you intending the results to be indicative?)
• How will you recruit them? (will you invite all members of En-Wiki to participate through the site notice, or target particular groups of editors/use some kind of random sample?)
• Will the design of the survey be informed by previous comparable surveys? If so, how? (will you be re-using questions which proved successful, and not using those which have been proven to not work?, etc)
• How will you analyse the results of the survey? - are you hoping to conduct quantitative statistical analysis, or will you be treating the responses as essentially qualitative in nature?
• Who will conduct this analysis? (is this the "data analysis" mentioned as forming part of the duties of the project manager?)
• The proposal states "We will regularly communicate with survey respondents and interviewees; rather than engage with them only once, it is better to continually involve them" - what will this involve?

I guess what I'm getting at with the above is that conducting a survey which produces meaningful results is a non-trivial task, and this element of the proposal is a bit under-cooked. In particular, I'd suggest that you review previous surveys of Wikipedia editors and explain how you'll build on them (in terms of learning from their methodologies and filling gaps in their results). Nick-D (talk) 02:14, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I echo User:Nick-D's concern. The most pressing questions are: "What questions do you want to answer in the survey?" and "What factors will you try to control for?" If you don't have experience with survey design and methodology, I encourage you to ask around, since there are plenty of people around wikipedia who do. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:47, 3 October 2014 (UTC)