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I'm wondering about the methodology of choosing wikipedians for your research. Looking at your sample to date, I'm seeing many low edit-count folks, people who have left the project long ago, and even some blocked contributors. These solicitations are unlikely to gain you much useful information. Are you sampling randomly? If you're looking for an active wikiproject, I can recommend the WP:WikiProject Military History which has many active members who've been around for many years. If you need any assistance, feel free to contact me. BusterD (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@BusterD: Thanks for the comment! I want to focus mainly on the history of the United States, that's why I chose members of that project. I am aware of WikiProject Military History. Probably, I will ask the members of the project in the future. Apolo1991 (talk) 23:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome and thanks for your interest in the field. MH has task forces which are US centric. WikiProject:Biography also might serve as a source for subjects. I'll presume your intention is to maximize return engagement, so allow me to suggest navigation popups (available via this link in your own preferences). When applied to a user link, popups can give you some user information: #of edits, date of first edit, date of last edit, whether the account is blocked, etc. This info may allow you to quickly identify more likely respondents. BusterD (talk) 23:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some of us put a lot of time and effort in for years building up historical Wikipedia articles but got burnt out and moved on to other things. I think that the sample size of respondents should be of a wide variety and not just focused on very active users. I've moved on to Wikitree at this point, choosing to avoid the squabbles and politics involved here but every once in a while I will return to make some corrections or additions. I'm glad that Apolo1991 contacted me so that I could offer my input. Monsieurdlmon talk21:20, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. I responded to the survey after I saw your post about it here, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Survey about History on Wikipedia. Now that I'm on your talkpage, I notice you say, ... I want to focus mainly on the history of the United States ... but you don't mention "focus" on the Women in Red talkpage. Maybe consider adding that? Note, too, that there's a question to you on the Women in Red talkpage regarding participatory limitation to U.S. residents. Thanks in advance for clarifications, and I wish you well as you pursue your studies. Pinging LZia (WMF), a senior research scientist, lead, in the Wikimedia Foundation as a friendly FYI. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:06, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rosiestep: Hi, I decided to expand the area of my research and include multiple historical topics. That's why a sent a message to WikiProject Women in Red. My main focus is history on Wikipedia, as you can see from the title of the survey. It can include the history of the US, women's history, gender history, military history, etc. Apolo1991 (talk) 16:29, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You'll see I've also raised this on the WiR talk page. It seems to me you need to ask your professors how you can extend responses to those living outside the United States. Much of the most informative work on history has been carried out by non-residents. See for example all the detailed work on women's coverage in nationality law in the extensive series of articles by SusunW under Category:Nationality law. She's American but lives in Mexico and therefore cannot respond to your request.--Ipigott (talk) 16:47, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ipigott, you know me so well. I read this post with interest on the WiR page until I saw limit of the scope to US history. We are now and have always been a global world, not only because of human migration, but also because of legal and political expansion through colonization. Focusing solely on the US, the context is lost of how historical events did not happen in isolation. Writing comprehensive history is hard and one the most frequent reasons for that is that historians have tended to focus on Fooian narratives that give only mainstream/nationalist accountings of the past. As Wikipedia is a mirror of those trends, it is hard to include the stories of the un- and under-represented throughout history and even more difficult without understanding the context of international social development. SusunW (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ipigott:@SusunW:@Buckshot06: I completely agree with you that Wikipedia is a global project and I would like to make my study more international in the future. The current surveys are just a small part of a larger project on the production of historical knowledge on Wikipedia and are also restricted by the IRB policies for US residents. I am aware of your efforts to face bias in Wikipedia and that's why I sent you so many survey requests; I wanted to see why you engage with history on Wikipedia. Sorry for the inconvenience.Apolo1991 (talk) 22:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But you still post the message to users who say on their user page that they are not in the US. I can sort of understand that if somebody is active in a US centered Wikiproject and doesn't disclose their location it makes sense to assume that they are probably USAnian, but you should start looking at people's user pages before posting on their user talk page. By adding the message to user talk pages of users who are not eligible to participate, you don't just risk annoying people but you also make your study less robust. --bonadeacontributionstalk17:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You continue to send out messages to non U.S. residents without informing them that they cannot participate. This is no way to act on Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 21:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
He's now just going down the alphabet and posting on people's talk pages?! He is at least now saying that one has to be resident in the USA to participate, but surely there are better ways to go about this than alphabetical-order-to-users-who-don't-disclose-location-on-their-userpage. -- asilvering (talk) 18:22, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just curious, why is it that "non-USAnian" editors are not permitted to take part in this survey? And though "minimal", just what "risks" are involved? - wolf01:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Thewolfchild Ethics clearance for academic research often only applies to restricted locations. In this case, the research board presumably has said they only have jurisdiction in the USA. -- asilvering (talk) 18:20, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for reply. Still waiting for a reply from Apolo1991 explaining what "risks" are involved in responding to this survey... - wolf21:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Random comment here from a fellow NC State student. I'm an American so I qualified in the survey, and while I answered the questions mostly in the US-direction, at least half of my history related editing is about Africa, so I mentioned it as well. Just because you live in one country doesn't mean that's the only country you can write about! -Indy beetle (talk) 13:34, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@User:Indy beetle Thanks for participating. I completely agree with you. The restriction for US residents is because of IRB rules. If I wanted to include participants from all over the world, I had to ask for permission from multiple agents and that would make the whole process more complicated. Surveys are just a small part of my project. However, I would like to expand my project in the future and make it more international. Apolo1991 (talk) 13:54, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Research interests
Hi apolo1991, I've responded to your survey. Please feel free to reach out to a couple of the editors I mentioned in the survey if you need to--tell them I sent you. And contact me again if you have questions about my answers! auntieruth(talk)15:22, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I urge you to rethink your survey methodology! You're clearly not effectively targeting relevant editors, which suggests to me that you haven't done a lot of pre-survey observation. Without this, how can you be sure you're asking relevant, helpful questions? A wide-net survey could be useful as a basic way to formulate your ideas for a more in-depth, specific survey, or to recruit participants for such a survey, but in that case questions like #7 are hardly fair to ask, especially without an apparent character limit on the field - you are going to be wasting a lot of people's time for data that is unlikely to be particularly helpful. The fact that you've apparently changed recruitment methodology twice already is also of significant concern. What approach did your ethics board actually approve? Are you sure you're still following it? -- asilvering (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't looked at your survey, but I am puzzled why you restrict respondents to "resident in the United States"? I lived in US for 10 years and worked at the university, I don't know if I was a resident then and I can't think of any good methodological reason to limit the survey to such a group. You should just ask people if they are a resident (yes/no/other). I probably fall under 'other', but really, I can't think of why you'd want to reduce your eligible responses by ~60% (I estimate only ~40% of En wiki editors are US residents). Wouldn't just asking them for their nationality be enough? You could then compare US citizens to the rest of the world. PS. FYI I am one of Top 200 active editors on this project, I extensively write about history - mostly Polish but sometimes US - and yet while you say you want to study editors who write about history you exclude me for a bizarre reason... here's a lesson: think more about a methodology. PPS. I am an associate professor of sociology these days, so take my word as advice from a senior colleague. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here10:04, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus The residency thing is because of IRB rules. And of course you were a US resident when you lived there for ten years while working at a university. Unless you were doing so illegally (presumably not). -- asilvering (talk) 16:02, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Seems like I need to put on my grumpy professor hat :/ Thanks for providing another example of how IRB is crippling research. I am so glad I was able to move to a place where IRB rules are much less stifling. Either way, your research has a major methodological flow. I have read hundreds of papers form the area of Wikipedia study, which is my specialty, and I don't recall any that was limited to US residents only. If I was your advisor I'd be trying to figure out how to fix this glaring problem before the survey stage, as I am sure it is something that's possible to fix. As it is now, I can only say that were I a reviewer for any resulting paper, I'd be seriously concern about whether any findings are reliable enough for publication since there is no theoretical reason to limit survey to US residents only, and resulting findings will be skewed. Sorry to say, but I think unless you can fix this issue, I'd recommend people to avoid taking the survey, as the results, limited as they are due t the methodological error, will be problematic. I strongly recommend you reapply to your IRB to remove those weird shackles and open the survey to non-residents. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here10:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering Ah, true, I was just building up from what you said and indeed got confused that this is the student in question who is replying. They don't seem very active here, and I also will add that they don't seem to have made any edit that is not related to the survey. Another example of bad practices, IMHO - taking time of volunteer editors while not providing anything back (I don't recall seeing anything about making the results or findings open source, either). Overall, this is probably the fault of the supervisor(s), who don't understand Wikipedia, and everyone involved seems to be focused on using Wikipedia without the slightest thought of giving something back to the project. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here10:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus I agree that Wikipedia is a global project and focusing only on US residents is a significant restriction for the research. As I have explained, this is because of the IRB policies. If I wanted to recruit participants from other countries, I had to ask for permission from multiple agencies. That would make the project far more complicated. Surveys are just a small part of my project. Of course, I want to do that in the future and expand my project by including non-US users. It is correct that I am not an active user of Wikipedia and I haven't contributed to the community. However, my project aims to show the significance of Wikipedia users in the production of historical knowledge, an aspect that has been completely ignored by historical scholarship. Apolo1991 (talk) 15:12, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So far, you've sent talk page messages to approximately 850 people. I understand this survey is important to you, but there's a term for this: spam. Even if each person spends 10 seconds reading the message before realizing they don't want to participate, you've used our own system interface to waste 2 person-hours of our users' time, and there's no indication that you're going to stop. Many of these people are not your target audience. That is not what user talk pages are for (as you've discovered, it is also not what our "email this user" feature is for). Placing general notices at some targeted Wikiproject noticeboards is fine. Perhaps some related Wiki projects have an opt-in newsletter they send out monthly; you could ask those projects to mention your survey, but please leave people alone on their talk pages. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:20, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I actually think it's ok to message people, as long as it is not done too often. There are procedures and such, WP:MMS. And I think there might have been something about best practices for survey requests, but I am not sure it's binding and where it was discussed (somewhere at meta? nothing useful found at Wikipedia:Survey), hmmm, ping semi-random person I vaguely recall might be familiar with this: User:Bluerasberry. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here10:00, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Floquenbeam: Sorry for sending so many messages on the talk pages of users. I thought that it would be an appropriate way of recruiting participants for my study. I would just leave my survey messages in the talk pages of the WIkiprojects and not send more in the users' talk pages. Apolo1991 (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Wikiproject talkpages are fine; if some individual Wikiproject objects, they'll let you know, but I'd guess that won't be widespread. You probably won't get quite as strong a response, but it's definitely less annoying for everyone. Good luck. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I got one of your requests and I have no problem with being asked, wish you all the best with your PhD and would be interested to read your results. {I know some are saying you shouldn't contact us but when your thesis is written, I think it would be good if you could contact all you asked and send a link to your thesis, even if it does waste 10 seconds of our time.}
My issue is why we have to be Americans to participate. English language wiki isn't just for Americans, you know. Many other Anglophones like me - British, as well as Canadian, Aus, NZ and second language speakers like Indians - also contribute.
Not only do I think that we should be included in your survey, I also think it would be interesting to see if there's a difference between the way Americans and Brits or other non-Americans attempt to add to wiki history pages.
For example, it would be interesting to see if non-Americans are more likely to comment on pages that isn't aren't about their home nation's history.
I think the fact that you only asked Americans is interesting in itself. Are you only interested in American history, or the thoughts of Americans? For example, while academics of both nations try to be objective, and all nations have nationalists who will always take their own nation's side, when looking at the group of people between these two extremes - those with an interest in history who aren't full time academics - it often seems to me that when you read online comments, Americans seem to sometimes have less understanding of other nations' histories, or when discussing shared history, Americans are more likely to understate the role of other nations.
For example, in online comments, it's so common to see Americans claiming their role in WW1 was as important as WW2, while almost entirely ignorant of the role of the Indians, Canadians or Anzacs. But this is effectively hearsay, I have no data to analyse this either way and would be interested to see a thesis that in part looked at this issue.
Thus, if you could show that while the average online comments of Americans are more self-centred than other Anglophones, on wiki there's no difference because all Anglophone historians strive for the same levels of objectivity.
I assume you have already decided what your thesis will cover with your supervisor and won't be changing. So can I simply ask why you only wanted to speak to Americans?
I would be interested to know how much Anglophone wiki history is written by Americans and other Anglophones and to see how this relates to population size.
Are more words written, or pages created, per capita by Americans than other Anglophones? And if so, what do you think are the explanations for this? Ganpati23 (talk) 00:43, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
what is 'Public History'?
These days, several colleges are coming up with more and more ... nuanced ... degree majors/minors, but this one has escaped me. I'm also a bit surprised your thesis was accepted - with all due respect, the value of it concerning Wiki editors would not pass muster at many other institutes of learning. NC State is basically an engineering school - have any professors from Duke or Chapel-Hill chimed in with their opinions? Best regards. 50.111.19.34 (talk) 03:30, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
