Hi All, Just a friendly reminder that our April showcase on *Editor Motivations* will start in about an hour at 9:30 AM PT / 16:30 UTC. Join us at *https://www.youtube.com/live/vl0DpsfnPXY <https://youtube.com/live/vl0DpsfnPXY?feature=share>.*
Best, Kinneret On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 9:31 AM Kinneret Gordon <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > The April 2025 Research Showcase will be live-streamed this Wednesday, > April 16, at 9:30 AM PT / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here > <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1744821000>. Our theme this month is > *Motivation > of Wikipedia Editors*. > > *We invite you to watch via the YouTube > stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/vl0DpsfnPXY > <https://youtube.com/live/vl0DpsfnPXY?feature=share>.* As always, you can > join the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live. > > Our presentations this month: > Motivating Experts to Contribute to Digital Public Goods: A Personalized > Field Experiment on WikipediaBy *Yan Chen (University of Michigan)*We > conducted a large-scale personalized field experiment to examine how match > quality, recognition, and social impact influence domain experts' > contributions to Wikipedia. Forty-five percent of the experts expressed > willingness to contribute in the baseline condition, while 51% (a 13\% > increase over the baseline) expressed interest when they received a signal > that an article matched their expertise. However, none of the treatments > had a significant effect on actual contributions. Greater actual match > quality between a recommended Wikipedia article and an expert's expertise, > measured by cosine similarity, an expert's reputation and the Wikipedia > article length, were the most important predictors of both contribution > length and quality. These findings suggest that match quality between > volunteers and tasks is critically important in encouraging contributions > to digital public goods, and likely to volunteering in general. > > > Quantitative Analysis of Zambian Wikipedia Contributions: Assessing > Awareness, Willingness, Motivation, and the Impact of Gamified Leaderboards > and BadgesBy *Lighton Phiri (University of Zambia)*Wikipedia is a widely > recognized and valuable source of information, However, it encounters > persistent challenges in attracting and retaining active contributors. It > is recorded that only 10 people from Zambia contribute and create content > on wikipedia in the month of may 2023. While a large number consumes > Wikipedia content, there is a noticeably low number of Wikipedians that > contribute content on and about Zambia. This paper presents a Facebook > plugin, WikiMotivate, aimed at motivating Zambian Wikipedians to update > pre-existing content, add new entries, and share their natural expertise. > WikiMotivate was implemented as a Facebook plugin that utilizes leaderboard > and badge gamification features to encourage and incentivize active > Wikipedia content contribution. Using a mixed-methods approach, historical > Wikipedia edit histories were used to quantify content contributed by > Zambian Wikipedians. In addition, user surveys were conducted to determine > relative levels of awareness about Wikipedia, willingness to contribute > content on Wikipedia and perceived motivating factors that affect content > contribution on Wikipedia. Furthermore, a Facebook plugin, WikiMotivate, > was implemented in order to be used as a service for motivating potential > Zambian Wikipedians. Finally, in order to determine the most effective > approach, a comparative analysis of leader-boards and badges was conducted > with nine (9) expert evaluators. The results clearly indicate that a > significant proportion of Wikipedia content on and about Zambia is authored > by Wikipedians from outside Zambia, with only 11% of the contributors, out > of the 224, originating from Zambia. In addition, study participants were > largely unaware of the various editing practices on Wikipedia; > interestingly enough, most participants expressed their willingness to > contribute content if trained. In terms of motivating factors, “Information > Seeking and Educational Fulfillment” was the key motivating factor. The > Facebook plugin implemented suggests that incorporating leaderboards and > badges is a more effective approach to motivating contributions to > Wikipedia. This study provides useful insight into the landscape of > Wikipedia content contribution in the Global South. > > [1] https://unza.zm [2] https://datalab.unza.zm [3] https://emi.org.zm > Best, > Kinneret > > -- > > Kinneret Gordon > > Lead Research Community Officer > > Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> > > > *Learn more about Wikimedia Research <https://research.wikimedia.org/>* > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
