[Apologies for cross-posting]
Hi everyone,
Almost a year ago, we [1] embarked on a research project to understand who Wikipedia readers are. More specifically, we set a goal for finding a taxonomy of Wikipedia readers. In the upcoming Research Showcase, I will present the findings of this research.
Logistics
Title
Why We Read Wikipedia
Abstract
Every
day, millions of readers come to Wikipedia to satisfy a broad range of
information needs, however, little is known about what these needs are.
In this presentation, I share the result of a research that sets to help
us understand Wikipedia readers better. Based on an initial user study
on English, Persian, and Spanish Wikipedia, we build a taxonomy of
Wikipedia use-cases along several dimensions, capturing users’
motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they are seeking,
and their knowledge of the topic of interest prior to visiting
Wikipedia. Then, we quantify the prevalence of these use-cases via a
large-scale user survey conducted on English Wikipedia. Our analyses
highlight the variety of factors driving users to Wikipedia, such as
current events, media coverage of a topic, personal curiosity, work or
school assignments, or boredom. Finally, we match survey responses to
the respondents’ digital traces in Wikipedia’s server logs, enabling the
discovery of behavioral patterns associated with specific use-cases.
Our findings advance our understanding of reader motivations and
behavior on Wikipedia and have potential implications for developers
aiming to improve Wikipedia’s user experience, editors striving to cater
to (a subset of) their readers’ needs, third-party services (such as
search engines) providing access to Wikipedia content, and researchers
aiming to build tools such as article recommendation engines.
Looking forward to seeing you there, and if you can't make it, please feel free to watch the video later and get in touch with us with questions/comments. :)