Community Capacity Map/CEE Survey 2018
Abstract edit
This page shares results from a survey conducted in August 2018 among Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) communities, where individuals were invited to rate their communities and/or affiliates on a number of capacities, on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high).
The total number of respondents is 124 people. Some communities saw only one or two people responding, so the results are far from representative of the opinion of those entire communities. They are nonetheless offered below, each with its n number, as a glimpse into the opinions of at least a handful of volunteers from these communities. For some communities, this is the first ever assessment of capacity about them.
All of these are self-assessments. They should be read to indicate perceived capacity or need rather than solid fact.
Capacity ratings edit
Spoiler: Overall, the highest capacity across CEE, at an average of 4.1, is event logistics. The lowest, at an average of 2.54, is modern tools (PetScan, Quarry, Wikidata Query,...).
Community capacities edit
| lang | n | conflicts | abuse | modern tools | help/ | recognition | copyright / OTRS | Wikidata | bots/Lua | NPOV | gadgets / |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sq | 2 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 5.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 1.00 |
| hy | 8 | 4.00 | 3.29 | 2.71 | 3.63 | 4.25 | 4.00 | 4.25 | 3.57 | 4.29 | 3.29 |
| az | 2 | 1.50 | 1.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 1.50 | 3.00 |
| ba | 5 | 3.80 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.80 | 4.60 | 4.00 | 3.40 | 2.50 | 4.60 | 2.33 |
| be | 3 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 1.33 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 4.00 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
| bg | 8 | 3.25 | 3.88 | 2.75 | 3.00 | 2.57 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.63 | 3.63 | 3.75 |
| myv | 2 | 2.50 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 5.00 | 4.50 | 5.00 | ||
| eo | 1 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 |
| ka | 4 | 2.50 | 2.75 | 1.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.25 | 2.25 | 2.25 | 3.25 | 2.50 |
| el | 7 | 2.29 | 2.14 | 2.20 | 3.14 | 2.71 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.00 | 2.67 | 2.80 |
| hu | 5 | 3.20 | 2.80 | 2.40 | 2.75 | 1.80 | 4.20 | 3.60 | 3.40 | 3.75 | 4.00 |
| lv | 3 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 4.33 | 4.67 | 3.67 | 4.00 |
| lt | 1 | 2.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | |||
| mk | 10 | 4.11 | 4.11 | 2.86 | 4.75 | 4.00 | 4.33 | 3.75 | 3.13 | 4.22 | 3.22 |
| cnr | 1 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 5.00 | ||||
| sr | 6 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 1.75 | 3.20 | 3.17 | 4.33 | 4.17 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.50 |
| sk | 11 | 2.45 | 3.20 | 2.33 | 3.09 | 2.20 | 4.20 | 3.44 | 3.22 | 3.67 | 2.80 |
| sl | 2 | 3.50 | 1.00 | 2.50 | 1.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 1.00 | 3.50 |
| tr | 8 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.71 | 3.88 | 3.00 | 4.13 | 3.13 | 4.14 | 3.75 | 3.71 |
| pl | 11 | 2.82 | 2.82 | 2.45 | 3.10 | 1.90 | 3.73 | 3.09 | 3.09 | 3.27 | 4.09 |
| uk | 10 | 2.60 | 2.70 | 2.44 | 2.80 | 2.60 | 4.00 | 3.60 | 2.56 | 3.40 | 3.00 |
| ro | 3 | 1.33 | 1.33 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 1.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 1.67 | 2.67 |
| ru | 11 | 2.73 | 3.56 | 3.56 | 3.18 | 3.27 | 4.27 | 4.27 | 4.09 | 3.91 | 3.63 |
Affiliate capacities edit
| lang | n | affiliate | comms/social | org. conflict | partnership creation | partnership exec | image/data donations | event programs | event logistics | proj. eval. | staff eval. | org. governance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sq | 2 | WCUG Albania | 1.00 | 1.00 | 5.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | |
| hy | 8 | WMAM | 3.60 | 4.33 | 4.00 | 4.60 | 4.25 | 4.80 | 5.00 | 3.75 | 4.00 | 4.00 |
| az | 2 | AWUG | 5.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 4.00 | 2.00 | 5.00 |
| ba | 5 | WBAUG | 4.50 | 4.25 | 3.00 | 4.75 | 3.00 | 4.33 | 4.00 | 4.67 | 2.33 | 4.75 |
| bg | 8 | WBGUG | 2.33 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.67 | 2.33 | 1.00 | 2.33 |
| eo | 1 | ELiSo | 2.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | |||
| ka | 4 | WCUG Georgia | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| el | 7 | WCSA Greece | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | |
| hu | 5 | WMHU | 1.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 1.50 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | |
| lv | 3 | WLVUG | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | |||
| mk | 10 | GLAM MK (n=5) and Shared Knowledge (n=2) | 4.71 | 4.14 | 4.57 | 4.71 | 4.14 | 4.71 | 4.86 | 4.33 | 2.67 | 4.67 |
| sr | 6 | WMRS | 4.25 | 3.00 | 3.75 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.75 | 3.75 | 4.50 | 4.25 | 4.75 |
| sk | 11 | WSKUG | 2.50 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 1.50 | 3.50 | 4.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
| tr | 8 | WCUG Turkey | 2.25 | 5.00 | 3.20 | 2.20 | 3.80 | 2.40 | 1.67 | 2.33 | 2.00 | 2.00 |
| pl | 11 | WMPL | 4.00 | 3.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 4.50 | 5.00 | 4.50 | 3.00 | 4.50 |
| uk | 10 | WMUA | 3.60 | 2.80 | 3.60 | 3.40 | 3.60 | 4.17 | 4.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.60 |
| ro | 3 | WROMDUG | 1.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.00 |
Some paraphrased comments edit
Respondents were invited to offer additional comments on their communities' health and capacity. To protect the privacy of the respondents, reproduced here are comments that are not personal or incident-specific and that are potentially useful/interesting to the broader CEE community, e.g. as a sense for what issues are shared by others.
The comments are paraphrased, for clarity, brevity, and greater anonymity.
- our community is small, and there are almost no active WikiProjects or task forces. So it's hard to get a sense of best practices or find other editors interested in a given field.
- Our community doesn't make much time for writing down and organizing policy. Our "respected leaders" are respected, and manage to resolve disputes verbally and quickly.
- We want to know more about AbuseFilter
- Our small community relies on policies and best practices from larger wikis, especially Russian. We re-use some tools from Russian (e.g. for Wikidata). We don't have bot/tool builders of our own.
- We don't have much conflict on our large wiki. Neutrality is achieved by the community largely picking "neutral" topics to begin with.
- Our wiki suffers from dominance of a few long-standing editors who impose their opinions. We need a Wikimedia-appointed person to mediate a dialogue between editors and admins.
- New and existing users are regularly harassed, even across wikis. In some cases, harassment is tolerated and/or encouraged by admins.
- Our community has a clique of admins who share political views, and are effectively winning all arguments (even on non-political issues) by mutually supporting each other on all topics. They have little interest in improving quality of articles, and instead hound new and existing users and revert at the smallest technicality. Core articles remain low-quality and they don't care.
- Our community is in a very deep crisis.
- We have some good long-time technical contributors still active, but decreasingly so, and likely to burn out. I worry about not having newer technical volunteers to replace them if they do.
- we have good capacity on most issues, but very low robustness -- all depends on 1-2 people in each capacity.
- I don't like that Commons is like a second English Wikipedia. Other communities feel second-class when engaging on Commons.
- Admins on our wiki protect pages not according to policy; they lack understanding of decision-making by consensus. They abuse their power.
- We have a lot of (non-)neutrality issues in CIS-related articles. Some help pages are really out of date. Technical capacity is good, but attitude of the community to any kinds of technical developments (innovation) is really harsh.
- We have abuse of power by admins. Some users are protected, and others are left to suffer. Our Wiki is not truly free.
- There is a group of editors for whom the rules do not apply, perhaps due to their large edit count.
- There is a lack of feedback from actual readers (not web spiders and robots), so it is hard to feel that our work matters, in our small language.
- Our two biggest problems are conflicts and retaining new users. These two problems mutually reinforce each other and form a vicious circle that we have to break somehow.
Asaf will be separately following up with some respondents (those who gave permission to follow up with them) to discuss some of the specific incidents and specific concerns raised in the comments.
Feedback edit
Feedback welcome on the discussion page.