Dear all,

we are a research team at the University of Wuerzburg (Germany) interested in the reasons and motives why participants are involved in Wikipedia as authors, administrators, or software developers.

We would like to invite everyone who contributes to Wikipedia to take our online survey. The questionnaire is available at:

http://www.unipark.de/uc/wikipedia/

The questionnaire is in English, but participants from other Wikipedias are especially invited to take part as well. Your responses are extremely important to us!

We hope this study will

* provide statistical data and insight about Wikipedia, * encourage a helpful discussion between participants, and * reveal best practices for Wikipedia as well as related Open Content projects.

For more information and the current status of the study, please visit our website:

http://www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/ao/research/wikipedia.php?lang=en

To allow for reliable results, we hope that as many contributors as possible complete the questionnaire. You would especially help us if you could link to the survey from visible Wikipedia pages (e.g., community pages or recent changes).

We would also be glad if you forward this e-mail to people who don't regularly read this list.

We are extremely grateful that a number of people have already linked to our survey from their blogs or set links on prominent Wikipedia pages. We even have a Wikipedia page ourselves now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_W%C3%BCrzburg_survey%2C...

If you have questions or suggestions regarding the study or the questionnaire, please don't hesitate to contact us. We're looking forward to your participation -- and thanks a lot for your time and input!

Best wishes from Germany,

Joachim Schroer Guido Hertel Dana Jäger Elisabeth Pfeiffer Nils Sauer