Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/A Whole New World - Integration of New Editors into the Serbian Wikipedia Community

statusFunded
A Whole New World - Integration of New Editors into the Serbian Wikipedia Community
start and end datesJuly 2023 - July 2024
budget (USD)25 000-30 000 USD
fiscal year2022-23
applicant(s)• Nevena Rudinac and Nebojša Ratković

Overview edit

Applicant(s)

Nevena Rudinac and Nebojša Ratković

Affiliation or grant type

Wikimedia Serbia

Author(s)

Nevena Rudinac and Nebojša Ratković

Wikimedia username(s)

Nevena Rudinac

Neboysha87

Project title

A Whole New World - Integration of New Editors into the Serbian Wikipedia Community

Research proposal edit

Description edit

Description of the proposed project, including aims and approach. Be sure to clearly state the problem, why it is important, why previous approaches (if any) have been insufficient, and your methods to address it.

Editors on Wikipedia form a specific community. Someone who is just starting to edit articles on Wikipedia has to learn not only the technical aspects of Wikipedia (things such as editing articles on Wikipedia or posting photos on Wikimedia Commons), but also various rules and norms of the community of Wikipedians, and how it functions. New editors have a task to integrate into an already existing group, which can present a challenge by itself. Integration can be especially challenging for underrepresented groups such as women or minorities.

Several previous studies have focused on the Wikipedian community (Bryant et al, 2005; Konieczny, 2008; Baytiyeh & Pfaffman, 2010; Hara et al, 2010). However, a limited amount of studies were dedicated explicitly to new editors ( Bryant et al, 2005). Also, most of those studies were oriented toward English Wikipedia and other communities on different language versions of Wikipedia remained out of reach. This research aims to find answers to questions such as what motivates new editors to join Serbian Wikipedia, how they approach and accommodate in the community of other editors, what challenges they face, and how those challenges could be overcomed. We chose to focus on Serbian Wikipedia communities because it is quite large and active communities. Serbian Wikipedia is ranked 21. Wikipedia in the world, including those in World languages (such as English, French, or Spanish Wikipedia), and it is one of the biggest Wikipedias in Europe. One additional reason for our decision is that due to the cultural and historical context, Serbian Wikipedia is edited by people from Serbia and editors from the entire Balkan region. The question of integration of new editors is especially relevant to Wikimedia’s Educational program because it gathers a lot of new editors through various activities. However, this question is of great importance to other Wikimedia projects and the Wikipedia community because it can showcase how we can attract new editors and help them integrate into the Wikipedians community as best as possible.

The research will be carried out in two stages. In the first one, we will construct a questionnaire to quantitatively examine editors' motivation for editing Wikipedia and the potential challenges they might face. In the second stage, we will conduct several focus groups with new and experienced editors to further understand their experience and get a deeper insight into the new editors' integration phenomena.

Personnel edit

  • We plan to hire two additional researchers to help us carry out this research. At this point, we do not know specific information about additional personnel, however, most likely, they will be researchers from the University of Belgrade, Serbia

Budget edit

Approximate amount requested in USD.

25 000-30 000 USD

Budget Description

Briefly describe what you expect to spend money on (specific budgets and details are not necessary at this time).

Salary - 18.780,00 USD

Wikimedia Serbia employees - 8.760,00 USD

Two hired researchers - 10.020,00 USD

Open access journal publications - 6.000,00 USD

Service - 5.000,00 USD

Tax - 1.000,00 USD

SurveyMonkey software - 1.440,00 USD

Service - 1.200,00 USD

Tax - 240,00 USD

Other expenses (e.g. surveys, software for transcription of interviews, etc) - 2.500,00 USD

Total: 28.720,00 USD

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVKi_1fCzYhX3BQyqPTpPmrKbAPkJA3vxN3ysdqNSzw/edit#gid=0

Impact edit

Address the impact and relevance to the Wikimedia projects, including the degree to which the research will address the 2030 Wikimedia Strategic Direction and/or support the work of Wikimedia user groups, affiliates, and developer communities. If your work relates to knowledge gaps, please directly relate it to the knowledge gaps taxonomy.

In terms of Wikimedia’s 2030 Strategy Direction, this research goes in line with the goal to provide for safety and inclusion, because its findings could help us understand how we can make Communities of Wikipedians more welcoming for new editors, especially those from underrepresented groups. More specifically, we intend to write guidelines for the integration of new editors into Wikipedia’s community that could be tied to the Universal Code of Conduct and valuable to many other affiliations and user groups, especially in the Balkan region due to the cultural similarities.

The finding can also be useful to the activities in Educational, GLAM, and Community support programs focused on involving new volunteers in Wikimedia Projects.

Dissemination edit

Plans for dissemination.

Wikipedians, Wikimedians, and partnering organizations will be informed about the research and its development through Village pump, Wiki commons, mailing lists, and social media. We also plan to showcase the research findings at local and international Wiki conferences (WikiLive, Wikimania, and CEE conferences). Additionally, the research will be disseminated to local and international academic communities through publications in peer-reviewed open-access journals and scientific conferences.

Past Contributions edit

Prior contributions to related academic and/or research projects and/or the Wikimedia and free culture communities. If you do not have prior experience, please explain your planned contributions.

Nevena Rudinac has a master's degree in Research and Experimental Psychology and has been a Research Assistant on several projects at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Nevena Rudinac works as Diversity Program Manager at Wikimedia Serbia.

Nebojša Ratković is Educational Progarm Manager at Wikimedia Serbia. Nebojša was a co-author of the paper "Women's Participation in Wikipedia: Cross-Border Balkan Perspective". Also, he was one of the authors of the papers "Wikipedia and Its Sisters Projects as Important Elements of the Teaching and Learning Process – a Review of the Global Situation", and "Desenvolvimento Profissional de professores – o exemplo do curso credenciado da Wikimedia Sérvia".


I agree to license the information I entered in this form excluding the pronouns, countries of residence, and email addresses under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. I understand that the decision to fund this Research Fund application, the application itself along with all the information entered by my in this form excluding the pronouns, country of residences, and email addresses of the personnel will be published on Wikimedia Foundation Funds pages on Meta-Wiki and will be made available to the public in perpetuity. To make the results of your research actionable and reusable by the Wikimedia volunteer communities, affiliates and Foundation, I agree that any output of my research will comply with the WMF Open Access Policy. I also confirm that I have read the privacy statement and agree to abide by the WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes