[okfn-discuss] Understanding expert barriers to participation to Wikipedia

Wed Feb 23 12:43:16 UTC 2011

Thought this might be of interest to the list! :-)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Dear all,

[Apologies for cross-posting]

We would value your contribution to a survey we launched some days ago
to understand expert barriers to participation to
Wikipedia:http://bit.ly/ExpertBarriers

Context
Wikipedia is increasingly used by university students for
"pre-research", to gain context and explore ideas for course
assignments and research projects [1]. Yet many among scientists,
academics and other experts are reluctant to contribute to Wikipedia,
despite a growing number of calls from the scientific and/or culture
communities to join the project [2-3].

The research initiative
The Wikimedia Research Committee [4] has just launched a survey to
understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not)
contribute to Wikipedia and other collaborative projects, and whether
individual motivation aligns with shared perceptions of Wikipedia
within expert communities. We hope this may help us identify ways
around barriers to participation. We hope that results will also help
us understand issues regarding power surrounding collaborative
cultures, popular communication of science and public engagement.

The survey is anonymous and takes about 20 min to complete. Please
help us circulate the link among your colleagues and collaborators:

http://bit.ly/ExpertBarriers

Dario Taraborelli
Panagiota Alevizou
Daniel Mietchen

[1] http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125899/
[2] http://www.jmir.org/2011/1/e14/
[3] http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiative/
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg