I apologize for the previous email, which was sent inadvertently.

In a message dated 1/24/2008 8:08:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, jwalsh@wikimedia.org writes:

Hi folks - keeping you informed,

Earlier today we made an announcement in concert with the Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT [a joint research and training centre of United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University] about the first ever survey of Wikipedians.

Thanks for this message. It could be argued that people have surveyed Wikipedians privately before (I just received an email this morning from someone conducting a survey of Wikipedians), but this seems to be the first such survey under the aegis of the WMF.

As such, it raises man interesting questions, the chief of which for me is: "How is 'Wikipedian' defined?" In Hebrew, the word for definition is "hagdarah," from the root "gader," or fence. In other words, when you define something, you put a fence around it, defining what is inside and what is out. When conducting a survey of Wikipedians, you are similarly determining "Who is in" and "Who is out."

Since you are very new to the community, I am sure Erik has informed you that this definition has long been debated on mailing lists, at meetings of staff and chapter leaders, at Wikimanias, and in various other fora. One such argument, which immediately comes to mind, was an email by Sj about two years ago, in which he suggested a very inclusive definition (from the pipes to the minarets, as he put it). Others, myself included, sought something a tad more exclusive. To the best of my knowledge, this issue was never resolved.

Perhaps that is because in an open project, such as Wikipedia, the boundaries are so fluid. Are staff considered Wikipedians? What about people who left the project, but who were largely responsible for establishing its infrastructure? What about trolls (Willie on Wheels has a hell of a lot of edits)? What about metapedians, who deal with policies, but have very few edits? What about critics, particularly critics who come from within the community? In the English Wikipedia there is often a debate as to whether Jimmy himself is part of the community or not--I do not know if the same debate occurs in other projects. While one might answer cynically that it all depends on what is convenient at the moment, the fact is that there is a certain fluidity of boundaries which must be taken into account.

Having rambled on about this, I am, again, curious to understand how you define community for the purposes of this survey? Nor is this just a philosophical issue; there are practical ramifications as well. For instance, when Imran and I organized the first community board elections, we had to determine who could vote--in other words, we had to determine who the community was. The result was only partially successful, as there were many exceptions to consider (could developers vote, for instance). In fact, at that time there was some effort to distinguish between "Contributing Active Members" and "Volunteer Users," whatever that meant. Only much later did the Board decide to abandon these definitions--and the principle of membership--entirely.

It seems to me that by conducting a survey such as this, of Wikipedians, all of these issues have been resolved. So, for purposes of clarification, how is Wikipedian being defined in his poll?

I apologize for the length of this post, but I believe that all these qu estions merit answers.

Danny

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