Grants:IdeaLab/Create a comprehensive set of metrics

Inspire campaign

Create a comprehensive set of metrics

The first step to improving is measuring, so the first thing to do is develop a set of metrics and reports. In addition, an editor survey.

countryUSA

themeediting statistics

idea creator• Gcanyon

this project needs...

volunteer

developer

advisor

community organizer

researcher

contact email

created on23:22, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Project idea

What Wikimedia project(s) and specific areas will you be evaluating?

Is this project measuring a specific space on a project (e.g. deletion discussions), or the project as a whole?
Reporting would mainly be on a per-wiki basis. If pages can be categorized overall, then at that level as well.

Describe your idea. How might it be implemented?

Provide details about the method or process of how you will evaluate your community or collect data. Does your idea involve private or personally identifying information? Take a look at the Privacy Policy for Wikimedia’s guidelines in this area.
Editor survey: simple enough -- need to define the survey questions and then promote on wiki. Questions would include demographics, overall satisfaction, pain points, and details about the edit/editor experience. No mandatory collection of PII, but editors might volunteer to be contacted for follow-up/more information.

Reports would be based on existing (I assume) log data and include (if they don't already exist):

-- average monthly contributors (exact definition TBD)
-- average visits/edits per month for those who edit.
-- edit volume by user
-- edit volume by category
-- monthly new pages by category
-- user consistency  -- how many months in a row do editors maintain a certain level of contributions
-- edit scale report -- large vs small edits, by user/category
-- more I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

Are there experienced Wikimedians who can help implement this project?

If applicable, please list groups or usernames of individuals who you can work with on this project, and what kind of work they will do.
Whoever manages the backend database and can write queries for reports.

How will you know if this project is successful? What are some outcomes that you can share after the project is completed?

The project is successful if we gain an overall dashboard of the health of the wiki community. Beyond that, if we find weak spots, phase 2 would be working to improve the metrics.

How would your measurement idea help your community make better decisions?

After you are finished measuring or evaluating your Wikimedia project, how do you expect that information to be used to benefit the project?
If we don't know whether the community is getting better or worse, it's likely to get worse. The information gathered would help us understand whether over time people are more or less likely to contribute, and that would allow us to figure out why those who drop out are giving up.

Do you think you can implement this idea? What support do you need?

Do you need people with specific skills to complete this idea? Are there any financial needs for this project? If you can’t implement this project, can you scale down your project so it is doable?
I created/used reports like this at answers.com. Unless the database doesn't support it, these reports are doable and actionable.

Get Involved

About the idea creator

I was product lead for answers.com for several years, and managed the quality and community efforts there. I've been on wikipedia for over ten years, with a number of edits/pages created.

Expand your idea

Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.

Expand into a Rapid Grant

No funding needed?

Does your idea not require funding, but you're not sure about what to do next? Not sure how to start a proposal on your local project that needs consensus? Contact Chris Schilling on-wiki at I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs) or via e-mail at cschillingwikimedia.org for help!