On May 31, 2012, at 10:37 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

On 5/30/12 7:19 PM, Béria Lima wrote:
I think that better than ask why people don't contribute, is better tell them why SHOULD they? For us is easier to pass by the fact that not everyone knows why they should contribute. We should give they as much info as possible to make them a contributor, not asking why they don't do it.

Contribution is almost always a question of motivation, if you don't motivate people to do it, they simply won't.


I think this is a good point. One of the most surprising results from our editor surveys was large disparity between the importance that men assign to editing Wikipedia and the importance that women assign to it. (A significantly higher percentage of men said they edit Wikipedia because it is important.) How is it possible that men and women view the importance of the exact same activity in dramatically different ways? I have a lot of theories, but I'd love to see more research into this.

Ryan Kaldari

Just want to be sure this makes it in -- it's not a gender-related study, but Ed Chi's research is probably the most directly relevant inquiry I've seen, into what motivates people to edit Wikipedia. See here: http://www.quora.com/What-motivates-people-to-contribute-to-Wikipedia/answer/Ed-H.-Chi

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]