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@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