Allikka

Some background

I am a researcher at the University of Warsaw, Poland, with background in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and complex systems. My focus is on the so called socio-technical systems, peer production communities, collaborative consumption,... (choose one) or rather how to make them better. While some (hint, hint) are quite successful, plenty just die out without even starting properly. And that's not because they don't have worthy goals or active participants. My idea is that, at least in part, the technology is to blame. App and platform desing (from the back-end to user interface) is focused on the individual (yes, even "social" media is in fact used to satisfy individualistic needs). Tech development is just not yet there to truly cater to community needs. What is missing? Well, that's what I'm trying to find out... To that end I'm studing various tech mediated communities - the Wikipedia, crowdfunding communities, fora, e-participation platforms, open source projects, and so forth.

WikiValues

This is one of my ongoing research projects in which I attempt to assess what makes some communities work out better than others. The working thesis is that diversity is the key feature. There have been some studies showing how interest / knowledge diversity among Wikipedia editors improves article quality. But I'm more interested in the diversity of roles that contributors are willing to take on. What makes some people painstakingly correct spelling errors or fix links? What makes others codify rules and yet others simply add their knowledge to the final artifact that is being built? Motivations in peer production communities have been studied en masse as if all these tasks require the same set of motivations.

My approach is different - I would like to see what are the different profiles of Wikipedia editors when it comes to what motivates them, what is important for them. That's why I study values - as they are believed to be precursors to motivation. As the theoretical basis I'm using Schwartz's theory of basic human values - it delineates some basic dimensions of values on which people differ and moreover it has been checked in numerous cross-cultural studies .

To check how diverse the community is I need to assess what different editors deem important. Normally, this kind of research would be carried out by handing out surveys to a, hopefully, representative sample of editors. But that would be a great loss because a) hey, all of Wikipedia is out there to study; b) I might only get the "core" of the community, the "perifery" would simply avoid the survey alltogether. So instead I'm trying to find some behaviors, characteristics and traits that I can dig out of the database and which would be a fair approximation of the answers I could get from a survey. Sure, I will still miss out some members of the community (I can only get information on those that have been active at least a little), but the sample should be more representative.

I have come up with a list of possible value indicators, but being an outsider I'd rather have some more competent judges that would asses how well they indicate values held by editors. Therefore, I have created a survey so that I can get some informed opinions on the matter. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated - filling the survey of course, but also any suggestions or comments to improve my list of indicators.

As a thank you, I will be updating this page with the results of the study - when they hopefully come - so that interested editors can read about the composition of their community. In the end, the aim is to make it easier for such communities to self-organize, evolve and fulfill their goals.