I think Ryan's point from earlier can still be extended to terrible data from 2016 is surely better than terrible data from 2008.  The possible caution would be that we think the data is *better* than terrible and base decisions off of it.  So I guess the question is, we get that this is a bad way to do things, but could any decisions be made from the results?

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Tilman Bayer <tbayer@wikimedia.org> wrote:


On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 9:07 AM, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Oh, I thought it was an Enwiki specific request, because the thread Pete pointed to starts with the following sentence:
The general editor surveys also featured results broken down by project, language or country. E.g. I would be happy to produce an enwiki-specific version of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012_-_How_old_are_you.png if there is interest (I'm not sure how accurate the claim about the median age in that thread is), or someone could use the public datasets from these surveys to dig into other enwiki-specific questions.

"Does anyone know if there is a reasonably up-to-date source regarding demographic statistics on regular English Wikipedia editors?" 

Either way, I have no objections. Just opinions :)

Jonathan

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari@wikimedia.org> wrote:
This request is not about English Wikipedia; it's about demographics for Wikipedia editors in general. Apparently, the last time we did a cross-wiki demographic survey was 2008. Let me know if that isn't correct.

The specific questions that people would like answers to are:
* What is the gender of Wikipedia editors?
* What is the age of Wikipedia editors?
* What is the educational background of Wikipedia editors?
* What is the relationship status of Wikipedia editors?
* What percentage of Wikipedia editors have children?

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 9:44 AM, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan@wikimedia.org> wrote:
CC'ing Edward Galvez, our survey specialist.

Hi Pete,

I support this idea in general, and am always interested in learning more about the demographics of our communities. A few considerations/suggestions (these are opinions: I'm not in a position to launch or kill a project like this).
  • It takes much more than a month to deploy and analyze a (useful, successful, and LEGAL) survey. Especially when you're asking about people's off-wiki lives (see Dan's comments above). WMF ran an annual editor survey for several years, and ended up stopping in part because it took a lot of time, and there was no clear research question to justify the continued effort of re-running the survey.
  • I'd like to hear a more detailed rationale about why we think the demographics of English Wikipedia may have changed since the last survey.
  • I'd like to hear a more detailed rationale for why it is more important to understand the demographics of English Wikipedians (who have already been surveyed) as opposed to, say, the demographics of contributors to languages associated with countries where a large number of people are coming online for the first time (and hence represent areas of significant content growth within Wikipedia as a whole). We've run comparatively fewer surveys targeted at these users, and we have greater reason to suspect that the demographics of these contributors are actively shifting.
  • This sounds to me like it could be a great Individual Engagement Grant project. If someone submitted this as an IEG and it was accepted, I would be happy to support the project by working with the project leader to craft a useful survey and get the relevant Legal approval.
Best,
Jonathan

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:05 AM, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Pete.  This is a subject that comes up every now and then, but there is no active effort I know of to measure demographics.  While it seems simple, and should be in a more ideal world, it is not.  Any sort of self-identification tends to be heavily biased because a lot of minorities, when they identify as such, are harassed in some pretty miserable ways.  We could run some of the tools we have to survey, like quick survey, and keep results anonymous, what specifically were you looking for?


On Friday, April 8, 2016, Peter Ekman <pdekman@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

Jimbo, on his talk page, said I should ask somebody at the WMF about
what's been going on and what might be happening soon re: Wikipedia
demographic surveys

Please see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Updated_demographic_statistics_on_Wikipedia_editors

My feelings are:
*This is an important problem that should be easily dealt with and can
be solved by a commitment from the top brass, and
*we need to take a spectacularly simple approach to just get it done.

Any feedback would be appreciated via my e-mail or even on Jimbo's talk.

Sincerely,
Pete Ekman
aka User:Smallbones

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