[Foundation-l] Wikimedian Demographics on Wikiversity

[John McC]

As an aternative to the (apparently stalled) Wikimedia
Census, I'd like to get some input (and participation)
for the Wikimedian Demographics resource on
en.wikiversity. 

The surveys are carried out using templates, which
include instructions when loaded onto the page... the
best way to understand it is to just try it out:

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikimedian_Demographics

The resource is primarily for participants to learn
about how surveys and polls are created, administered,
and analyzed, but obviously the data collected can be
used for the same purposes as the Census data would
have been. The wider scope allowed on Wikiversity will
also (hopefully) attract respondents who are less
interested in topics specific to the Wikimedia
Foundation by permitting surveys on everything from
politics to sociology to education. 

Rather than written responses, WMDG uses templates
which automatically create "answerboxes" (which look
suspiciously like userboxes) and categories that
reflect the answers. Users can then use tools like
DynamicPageList to interpret the data (though we hope
later to have better interpretation tools using either
the main toolserver or perhaps the wikiversity sandbox
server). 

The first round of surveys includes:

1. A basic survey about the level of participation in
the Wikimedia wikis, mailinglists, and so on
2. A set of surveys about nationality, residence, and
travel
3. A (very stubby) survey about operating systems
4. A short survey about subjects specific to
en.wikipedia
5. A survey about the 2008 US Presidential elections

The goal is to make it easy, educational, and fun for
anyone to create more surveys, and so one of the
current tasks is to make a few more "survey creation"
templates, because the #if/#switch variables used to
create the surveys  can be rather mind-bending for
those not familiar with template scripting. The first
of these (which creates yes/no questions) seems to go
down easily, and the "add country" template on the
nationality, residence, and travel is also quite easy
to use. 

Input would also be useful on survey questions of
specific interest to the foundation itself, such as
fundraising or other "Wikimedia-wide" issues (just
remember they have to be of the multiple choice or
yes/no varieties). The ability to attract readers
(rather than just editors) might be a good use of the
"anon" sitenotices as well. 

I plan to start announcing this on the various
"Village Pumps" of the English and "babel" projects
over the next few days (it's probably better to let
the other-language Wikiversities address the
"other-language" projects). 

-SB_Johnny


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