[RCom-l] Statistics behind Wikimedians with permissions

[Goran Milovanovic]

Hey,

I can help with statistical analysis if needed for this research.

Best,
Goran


On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 9:04 PM, Steven Walling <swalling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I would really like to have some work about people with special
>> permissions on Wikimedia projects (starting with rollbacker, then
>> admins etc.): is retention different than with regular users? if so,
>> how? did some policies have impact on behavior of those users; if so,
>> which? do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development
>> of wiki and how (just in broader sense, of course)? which
>> recommendations could be given based on statistical data? is it
>> possible and how if possible to have real-time analysis of the trends?
>> if possible, a tool would be needed; and so on.
>>
>> Not a lot of information outside of statistical analysis would be
>> needed, so it wouldn't require extra organizational efforts initially.
>> The initial target would be small wikis and all of them are
>> standardized by stewards. In future it would be good to have such
>> research on all Wikimedia wikis.
>>
>> So, the only issue is to find a researcher who would be willing to do
>> that. I would mentor such researcher and I would connect him or her
>> with other relevant Wikimedians, if necessary. I don't how how the
>> process related to the finding researcher and mentoring him goes, but
>> I suppose that Dario has clue :)
>>
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>
> Hey Milos,
> This is the kind of thing the summer researchers in the Community Dept.
> might be able to whip up pretty easily. Are you interested in all special
> permissions, or just certain ones?
> Getting different rates of retention for these permissions groups is
> relatively easy. Answering "do Wikimedians with special permissions
> influence development of wiki and how" is more qualitative and would take
> time to do comprehensively, though I think we know the answer is that admins
> in particular have an enormous impact on retention of other groups. As for
> groups like rollbacker, I would think that they have a slight but perhaps
> still measurably different impact, primarily because getting reverted with
> an impersonal explanation has a distinctly negative impact on whether people
> stick around or not. My theories aside, different permissions require their
> own individual analysis.
> I agree that working with a smaller wiki (and thus a smaller dataset) would
> be a good place to start, not least of which because it's likely that if
> there is a disproportionate impact from people with special userrights, the
> effect would be amplified on a smaller project.
> We currently have one researcher tasked with starting analysis of Portuguese
> Wikipedia, which though it's quite old/mature has only 30ish admins. I think
> I'll ask him to work on this kind of analysis soon...
>
> --
> Steven Walling
> Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org
>
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> RCom-l mailing list
> RCom-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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>
>



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