[WikiIT-l] Announcement: Survey study on the motivation of contributors to Wikipedia

[Joachim Schroer]

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 very pleased 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_2005

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


-- 
Joachim Schroer, Dipl.-Psych.
University of Wuerzburg
Department of Psychology II, Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Roentgenring 10
97070 Wuerzburg
Germany

Phone:	+49 931 31 6062
Fax:	+49 931 31 6063
http://www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/ao/staff/schroer.php