Thanks Luis. added my notes next to yours.
Hi, Michal-
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Some comments in-line:
On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:59 AM, Michal Lester <mlester(a)wikimedia.org.il>
wrote:
We are pleased to share with you the initial
results of the HEWP editors
survey:
Wikimedia Israel conducted an editors’ survey in August among HEWP
editors.
The questionnaire was based on the WMNL survey in
order to to enable
international learning in the future.
The survey had two target audiences: active editors (with voting rights
[1])
and contributors. The questionnaire was the same but distributed
differently. Active editors got an invitation to participate on their
talk
page, while contributors were invited through a
“Sitenotice”. Some 151
active editors and 171 contributors participated.
*Gender*: Almost 20% of the respondents were women.
Among the active editors, only 10% were women whereas 29% of the
contributors were women. The explanations (open answers) for limited
diversity among the editors ranged from a negative work atmosphere to a
conservative point of view about gender roles.
Editors in general did not find the low participation of women negatively
affects the coverage of topics in Wikipedia.
Did this vary by gender? i.e., do both men and women agree that low
participation affects coverage?
We checked again the data and there is difference but not significant.
But most of the women (82%) think that
low participation of women has an impact on the working environment. While
men (44%) think that it has only some impact.
Answering a question about how
to increase the participation of women, respondents offered workshops,
encouraging high school students to participate, expanding the wiki-women
group and providing general support.
*New editors*: A large majority of editors acknowledged that new editors
wanted to contribute to HEWP. They recognized the importance of a
continuous arrival of new editors and felt that new editors were welcome.
Did this vary by age of editors? i.e., did new editors agree that new
editors were welcome? :)
Yes but.... 44% of the contributors agree that new editors were welcome.
23% do not agree with the saying. Only 31% of contributors are new editors
(less than a year) so it is
hard to say because we do not analyze the newbies' answers apart from the
contributors.
*Work Atmosphere*: 34% of the respondents
reported that they were
satisfied
with the work atmosphere on the Hebrew Wikipedia.
Only 5.5% of the
editors
were not satisfied with it at all. However, 46%
noted that there was a
large number of conflicts. Active editors (66%) reported such conflicts
more than contributors (29%). Almost 46% of the active editors stated
that
they felt like they were in a conflict in the
past six months, while only
29% of contributors expressed the same. 61% of the editors indicated that
conflicts were either mostly or sometimes resolved in a good way.
Interesting!
Ideology, worldviews and egos were considered to
play a major role in the
development of conflicts. Contributors also mentioned lack of patience
from
the active editors.
*Wikimedia Israel*: 60% of the respondents are
familiar with Wikimedia
Israel. As expected active editors are more acquainted with WMIL than
contributors. Among them, 78% agree with the statement that WMIL provides
practical support to editors.
That's terrific.
The survey provides important information for the
HEWP editors’ community
and for Wikimedia Israel.
Wikimedia Israel will learn the data and use it to develop better support
for editors, contributors and newbies.
Please do keep us up to date on this; it would be very interesting to see a
model for transforming data into action. (My own department has been
thinking about this in light of our recent hire of a survey specialist;
hopefully something for us to keep improving on across the movement.)
Luis
Michal