phoebe ayers, 30/07/2012 18:52:
I'm not sure if in the long term focusing on specific language communities and recruiting fellows is the sustainable answer for the WMF -- actually I'm pretty sure it isn't -- but I also don't think it can hurt to try and build a deep (and as Amir notes cross-project translated) analysis of how different communities work, and this work will provide the basis for thinking about project comparisons. This is one of the deep gaps in the current Wikipedia research, too, and I'd love to see either the WMF or the research community (or both) do some deeper work into analyzing classes of projects as well as individual projects -- do very small Wikipedias share a set of needs? What about medium-sized ones? Do Asian-language projects share concerns or similar community structures? etc etc.
For instance I'd like to understand who decided that no editor survey for non-Wikipedias will ever be made. Nobody has ever answered the question and we're sick of asking it again. :-) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011#Unanswered_questions_about_previous_survey
Nemo