Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Reader views on articles (ID: 22208975)

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Applicant Details

Main Wikimedia username. (required)

Vaticidalprophet

Organization

N/A

If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)

N/A

Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)

Main Proposal

1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Reader views on articles

2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.

2023-08-28 - 2023-12-31

4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)

Australia

5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)

Not applicable

6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)

I will be recruiting English Wikipedia readers to read articles and answer questions about their personal assessments of their quality, in order to cross-reference editor and reader understandings of article quality, and improve the reader experience of the encyclopedia. In particular, I will research open questions about reader preferences, including:

1. How important are images to the reader experience?

2. What are reader preferences for article length?

3. How well do editor ratings of articles correspond to reader experience?

4. When exposed to the English Wikipedia quality assessment system, how do readers rate articles with known ratings?

The first survey will be a study of reader opinions of various biographies, at each quality rating, with and without images. Results of this survey will be published and available for further research. Further surveys will be planned to investigate additional questions raised by these results, and discover opinions on a broader variety of articles.

Relatively little research has been done on how readers understand articles, and much of it is not well-known by editors. As an active editor myself, I am in a strong position to outreach and implement the results of such a study. Studying these questions will allow for the implementation of significant article improvements and great strides in the reader experience.

7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.

The first phase of the study will be a survey of a diverse range of English Wikipedia readers. Participants will be recruited through various forms of social media, targeting people who report that they regularly read articles on the English Wikipedia, and will be paid for their time. The articles in the first page will be a curated list of biographies, listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vaticidalprophet/bio_study_list. Participants will be asked to read these articles and to give opinions on each of them.

I will inquire how well they understand the articles, what points they felt were strong or weak, and if there were any particular omissions they noticed. Questions will deal with their opinion of the articles' length, breadth, depth, and overall quality. Responses will be relatively freeform and permit open-ended discussion of many individual elements, allowing readers to bring up aspects they felt missing or underutilized (e.g. images).

Participants will also be introduced to the article quality assessment scheme used on the English Wikipedia. They will be asked to estimate what rating each article has, and asked to rank all articles in terms of their personal preferences.

Further surveys will be developed depending on the results of the first survey. Additional elements for exploration include non-biography articles, as well as samples limited to Featured and Good Articles.

8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.

The sole team member involved is User:Vaticidalprophet, an active editor on the English Wikipedia who has written a large number of articles, including quality-assessed articles.

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)

Participants will be regular readers of the English Wikipedia recruited from a diverse range of social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Discord, Reddit). They will be screened to ensure they do not have prior editing experience. Participants are expected to vary on many demographic characteristics, but will likely share a strong grasp of English and regular Internet use. As incentive to participate, they will be entered into a prize draw, and randomly chosen entrants will receive financial rewards. In order to follow up on prizegiving, participants will be asked for their email address, which will also be used to contact them for further surveys.

10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)

No

10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.

N/A

11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.

I have discussed this project onwiki and received some interest in seeing its results, though I have not received any explicit offers for collaboration.

12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)

Other Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)

13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)

Other

14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)

Not applicable

15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)

Improve User Experience

Learning and metrics

17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)

The intended outcome of this research is to learn more about reader perspectives on articles, and develop actionable article improvement plans. Specific areas of inquiry include:

1. How important are images to the reader experience?

2. What are reader preferences for article length?

3. How well do editor ratings of articles correspond to reader experience?

4. When exposed to the English Wikipedia quality assessment system, how do readers rate articles with known ratings?

18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)

Number of participants, editors, and organizers
Other Metrics	Target	Optional description
Number of participants	100	I am hoping to recruit around 50-100 participants for this survey, though higher numbers would be desirable if possible.
Number of editors	0	The purpose of this research is not to recruit editors, but to research the user experience of non-editor readers. Editor perspectives on article quality have rarely been compared to or based upon reader experience, and this research is intended to close that gap.
Number of organizers	1

Number of content contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project	Number of content created or improved
Wikipedia	60
Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions or Abtsract Wikipedia

Optional description for content contributions.

The purpose of this research is to assess articles on the English Wikipedia, though elements may be generalizable to other Wikipedias, or inspire research specific to those projects. Though this research does not directly create or edit Wikipedia articles, it involves the surveying of 60 existing articles and will be able to contribute to improvements to them. It is also hoped that findings will be generalizable across all articles, allowing further improvement of a potentially unlimited number.

19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)

No

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)

I am unsure how to ideally quantify survey results and would appreciate guidance in this area.

Financial proposal

21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

As a financial incentive, participants will enter a draw for $100. Ten participants each will receive this prize, resulting in an anticipated budget of $1000. An additional budget surplus of $500 will be inbuilt in the case of unexpectedly high participation (requiring a greater prize draw) or unanticipated expenses (such as the requirement to use a paid subscription plan for the survey host).

22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)

1500 AUD

22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.

1000 USD

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback

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Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse