On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
On 07/20/2013 11:05 AM, Laura Hale wrote:
This actually seems a bit backwards. Why not ask existing contributors why they contribute?
Can that ever be useful? People easily produce reasons after the fact, that are either untrue or impossible to apply to other individuals.
Yes, it can be useful because understanding motivation can be a great tool for outreach and for editor retention. You can compare the list of motivations as to why people contribute versus why people fail to contribute. There often appears a great big disconnect between the list, and I have not seen much evidence to suggest that people have explored this.
Why is it that some people contribute because think free sharing of knowledge is an important activity to engage in in their free time? But others do not contribute because they think the editor is too complex? Perhaps, the motivation to overcome the editing problems is higher for some populations than others... because one set is willing to do that and it is a non-issue but for another, it is a non-starter.