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