Hi all,
I'm Steven Walling, a longtime Wikimedia volunteer. Damian Finol (also a
longtime volunteer) and I are working on the beginnings of a new research
project in cooperation with the Foundation's Community Department.
Everyone knows that editors are publicly listed based on edit count, and
some other details are visible related to the type of contributions an
individual user makes.
The goal of this project is to try and highlight highly active volunteers
who may not participate in tasks that produce a high edit count. By creating
a detailed taxonomy of sorts for all the different roles users can take in a
project, we hope to get a better picture of who the most active contributors
are and what they are doing.
If anyone has done similar roles-based investigations into volunteer
participation or has any suggestions at all, please feel free to contact us
at feedback(a)wikimedia.org.ve or via the project's page on Meta at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contribution_Taxonomy_Project
Thanks,
Steven Walling
http://enwp.org/User:Steven_Walling