Talk:2019/Grants/Who can make Wikipedia a more reliable source for unadulterated information: A research study

Request for more information
Hi Bhuvana and Meena, hope all is well. Can you speak a little more to how you will select your editors, and also outline your interview protocol: including any information you might gather related to the diversity of the interviewees, as well as how the information will be stored and made available, and privacy considerations? Thanks much! - --Connie (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Response
Hi Connie,

Hope you are doing well! Thanks for putting forward these questions. Would like to slice down your questions and answer them correspondingly

Selection of editors
A study about the interviewee will be made before the interview based on their edits done to the articles so that we know in which category(1. Editors who are Experts and edit on Wikipedia; 2. Editors who are Non- Experts but edit on Wikipedia; 3. Editors who are Experts but do not edit on Wikipedia) we can fit the interviewee and can put forth the research questions accordingly.

Interview protocol
Research methodology

In this research study we will follow a semi-structured form of interviews with editors from English Wikipedians  in India and will follow a snowball sampling method to reachout to diverse sets of contributors around the globe. The subject of focus will be mostly the articles which have content on the sensitive areas such as those which connect to medicine, health, gender but not restricted only to these subjects, for example: suggesting medicines to cure COVID-19 affected patients is an alarmic topic to write on Wikipedia especially at this point of time and it matters about where does this source of information comes from. The interviewees will be mostly reached out on emails, telephonic calls or through any teleconferencing apps(Skype, WhatsApp, etc) and physical meets will be done only when it is very essential otherwise 80% of the research will be over remote calls/video chats.

Research questions The following will be the research questions for the three categories of editors we are considering as part of the research and this is also subject to change depending on the interest of the interviewee.

i) Questions for experts/non-experts who edit on Wikipedia 1. What are your most prominent sources for reference which you use for creating an article on Wikipedia? 2. How much accountability do you feel for the contributions you do on Wikipedia? 3. What are the other subjects that you contribute to Wikipedia and do you invest the same amount of effort in rendering such articles as equivalent to your expertise areas?

ii) Questions for experts who do not edit on Wikipedia:

1. How many years of expertise do you have in this field? 2. What is your perception on the articles on Wikipedia that already exist on the subjects you have knowledge about? 3. Has Wikipedia been useful for you? If so, in what way? 4. Are you aware that you can also edit on Wikipedia? 4.1. If yes, what sort of assistance/training do you need to edit on Wikipedia and are there any challenges you foresee in this? 4.2. If not, would you be interested to spend some time to add/edit content on Wikipedia?

Diversity
We will initially start with English Wikipedians in India and by using snowball sampling method we would approach more editors across the globe. We also look forward to reaching out to female editors who will fall into the categories of editors as classified by us.

Privacy considerations
The interviews will be made and captured upon the consent of the interviewee and the results will be published in the form of blogs and reports on a public platform which is accessed by many Wikipedians. The recordings of the interviews in any form will be with us only until we publish the reports and the real names or Usernames of the interviewees will be used for quoting purposes(to mention about a person’s works or saying) on these reports based on their preferences.

-- Bhuvana Meenakshi (talk) 16:50, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Connie,

Please let us know if the above details answer to your questions or whether you need more clarity on anything in specific. Thanks -- Bhuvana Meenakshi (talk) 06:58, 17 April 2020 (UTC)