CivilServant's Wikimedia studies/Impact Stats Study

CivilServant is in conversation with Wikipedians from several communities to develop a study that would test whether receiving information about one's "impact" - i.e. how many readers have viewed pages a user has edited - can motivate a newcomer to continue to contribute on Wikipedia.

As in other collaborative communities, Wikipedians volunteer their time for any number of reasons. Most research looks at the social and personal gains that motivate participation, but little work examines whether there is an intrinsic value of contributing to something meaningful. In this study, we hypothesize that if users see evidence of the impact of their contributions, they will be more motivated to continue to contribute.

Details of the study would be developed in collaboration with community members who act as "liaisons", guiding the design and run of the study. We anticipate, however, that a study would have the following elements: At a certain time period after registering, newcomers to a participating community would be assigned to either receive a talk page message that would inform them of their "impact" or they would receive another comparable talk page message that does not include their impact stats. After another time period the study would observe newcomers' participation to see if those who received impact stats were retained longer. The study could look at other participation outcomes.

The initial group of Wikipedians we are speaking with are part of the Bangla, German, Ghanaian and Slovak communities. If you think your community may also be interested in participating, please get in touch with CivilServant's reasearch manager, Julia Kamin.

This study was one of the many that emerged from Wikipedians as part of our Research Summit in Stockholm on August 19, 2019.