Submissions:2025/What motivates editors to take moderation actions? A presentation of ongoing research from the Wikimedia Foundation Research Team
This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2025.
Title:
- What motivates editors to take moderation actions? A presentation of ongoing research from the Wikimedia Foundation Research Team
Type of session:
- Lecture (15-30 min)
Session theme(s):
- Missing pieces
Abstract:
While Wikimedians don’t officially recognize “moderators” as a defined category, editors with and without extended rights engage in diverse actions that we can broadly call “moderation activities” such as reverting bad-faith edits and vandalism, patrolling new pages, reporting policy violations, engaging in discussions, mentoring newer editors, and much more. These activities are invaluable to developing and maintaining the quality of free encyclopedic content as well as the health and longevity of the communities. Taking on moderation activities while balancing intricate policy rules and engaging other editors requires specialized skills and knowledge, often acquired over a long editing tenure. This begs the questions, “Why and how do editors take on moderation activities?”, “What motivates editors to moderate in the long term and the short term?”, and, importantly, “How might we motivate newer editors to learn and help with these tasks?” (as well as, “What are ways we do not want to motivate new moderator actions?”). This lecture will present ongoing research from the Wikimedia Foundation Research team, covering academic literature on moderator motivations and where the unique Wikimedia ecosystem highlights gaps, findings from recent research projects such as the Centralized contributions for moderation activity, Watchlist and Task Prioritization, and Crowdsourced Content Moderation studies, and opening questions to the audience for how we may better understand and inculcate future generations of editors who help in managing and shaping the free knowledge commons.
Author name(s):
Wikimedia username(s):
- TAndic (WMF)
Affiliated organization(s):
- Wikimedia Foundation Research Team
Estimated length of session
- 15-30 minutes (30 minutes is ideal but I'm happy to adjust the presentation length to accomodate the schedule)
Will you be presenting remotely?
- I will present in-person
Okay to livestream?
- Livestreaming is okay
Previously presented?
Special requests:
- Equipment: Ideally would have a way to present slides