User:Jorgenev/research/Wikipedia subreddit user survey

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On 3 October 2011 volunteers were solicited from the /r/wikipedia forum on the social media website reddit to take a survey primarily about their relationship with Wikipedia.[1] More than two thousand responses to the short questionnaire were received in a single day; the below analysis is for the first 2235 responses received.

Results[edit]

Answer distribution for all questions[edit]

Frequency of article usage[edit]

Respondents were asked "How often do you use Wikipedia?".

Feelings about Wikipedia[edit]

Respondents were asked "What is you impression of Wikipedia overall?".

Perceived reliability[edit]

Respondents were asked "How accurate is Wikipedia?".

Wikipedia edit count of respondents[edit]

Respondents were asked "How many edits have you made to Wikipedia yourself?".

reddit karma of respondents[edit]

Respondents were asked "What is your reddit karma? (comment and link combined)".

Specific behaviors[edit]

Respondents were asked "Have you ever....." and then given a list of actions.

Myers-Briggs personality indicators of respondents[edit]

Respondents were encouraged to give their Myers-Briggs Type Indicator if they knew it. About half reported a type.

Ratings of Wikipedia editors intelligence[edit]

Respondents were asked to give their assessments of the intelligence of Wikipedia editors on a scale from 1 (extremely dumb) to 10 (very smart).

Ratings of Wikipedia editors personality[edit]

Respondents were asked to give their opinions of the personality of Wikipedia editors on a scale from 1 (extremely dislikable) to 10 (very likable).

Random word associations with Wikipedia[edit]

Respondents were asked to provide the first word they could think of that they associated with Wikipedia.

word times
Limitless 2
Omnipotent 3
Knowledge 4
Crowdsourcing 2
Springboard 2
Foundation 5
Anything 2
Accessable 2
Informative 23
Truthiness 7
Reference 4
Global 4
Vast 10
Innovative 2
Fast 6
Awesomeness 2
Robust 2
Easy 10
Progress 7
Available 4
Collaboration 3
Game 2
Godsend 2
Impressive 4
Brilliant 5
Freedom 9
Wonder 3
Distributed 2
Genius 2
Book 3
Accessible 3
Tits 3
Nice 5
Endless 6
Necessary 3
Words 7
Summary 2
Encyclopedia 34
Encyclopedic 2
Time 4
Better 2
Crowd 3
Library 3
Hitler 2
Omniscient 3
Invaluable 3
Wiki 9
Bananas 2
Encompassing 2
Sweet 2
Community 6
Sources 4
Stuff 5
Blue 2
Interesting 23
Easy! 2
White 12
Encyclopedia 2
World 2
All-knowing 4
Rad 2
Whales 2
Reading 2
Editable 2
Cool 16
Reliable 16
Starting-point 2
Fantastic 3
Jesus 2
Human 4
Facts 9
Huge 13
Educational 2
Start 3
Know-it-all 2
Dictionary 2
Reference 2
Encyclopaedia 3
Helpful 31
Database 2
Beautiful 4
Love 3
Dichotomy 2
Diverse 2
Underappreciated 2
Information 122
Hivemind 4
Power 2
Food 2
Important 2
Revolutionary 4
Collective 5
Depth 2
Google 3
Incredible 2
Thorough 2
Research 3
Fun 12
Math 2
Pedantic 2
Sharing 3
Big 12
Free 22
Large 3
Quick 12
Help 2
Fascinating 5
Overview 2
Random 4
Education 2
Useful 4
Wikipedia 5
Chaos 2
Source 5
Extensive 7
Homework 2
Worldwide 2
Good 6
Collaborative 6
Comprehensive 15
Godly 2
Wisdom 2
Info 13
All-encompassing 2
Occupied 2
Finally 2
Addicting 3
Factual 2
Smart 7
God 4
Penis 3
Learn 4
Entertaining 3
Essential 4
Fact 3
Current 2
Useful 45
Inclusive 2
Intelligence 2
Open 22
Citation 3
Til 2
Complete 6
Resource 4
Utility 2
Lots 2
Convenient 20
Internet 4
Awesome 2
Unbelievable 2
Handy 10
Truth 4
Classy 2
Text 3
Learning 4
Democracy 2
Broad 8
Amazing 23
Expansive 5
Answers 5
Unreliable 2
Overwhelming 2
School 2
Neat 5
First 2
Jimmy 5
Cheap 2
Knowledge 200
Everything 45
Bureaucracy 4
Addictive 6
Awesome 64
Books 2
Perspective 2
Dynamic 4
Potential 3
Memory 2
Whoa 3
Know 2
Discovery 3
Great 6
Fingertips 2
Practical 5
Future 7
Massive 6
Modern 2

Bias[edit]

This question was a free paragraph response which was answered by 772 persons.

The full list of answers has been dumped at User:Jorgenev/research/Wikipedia subreddit user survey/full list of bias answers.

The only widely cited bias was a liberal one.

Correlations[edit]

Personality vs intelligence ratings[edit]

Notice that while some gave high ratings for intelligence while giving terrible ratings for personality almost no one rated editor intelligence lower than personality. If you like a guy you have to respect him I guess.

Personality rating by edit count[edit]

Perceptions of editors personality seem to decrease as people get more involved to with the community, up to a point, then start increasing.

Percent donated to foundation by usage and approval[edit]

The first point of data for usage is non-significant.

Editcount versus karma[edit]

For this association each interval increase was assigned a value of one.

It does appear that whatever predisposes a person to be an active Wikipedia editor also predisposes them to be an active redditor.

Edit count versus donation percentage[edit]

Donation percentage of vandals and non-vandals[edit]

Vandals 14%
Non-vandals 15.9%

Vandalism by personality type[edit]

Type Non-vandals Vandals Percent vandals
ENFJ 14 6 0.3
ESFP 6 1 0.14
INFJ 38 5 0.12
ESTJ 7 3 0.3
ISTJ 32 12 0.27
ENTJ 49 9 0.16
ISFP 10 1 0.09
INTJ 221 40 0.15
ISTP 27 8 0.23
ENTP 50 19 0.28
ESTP 11 2 0.15
INTP 149 47 0.24
ESFJ 10 1 0.09
ISFJ 14 0 0
ENFP 33 3 0.08
INFP 53 11 0.17

Perhaps the only statistically significant difference was between INTP and INTJ.


Have vandalized by edit count[edit]

Edits Non vandals Vandals Percent vandals
“1” 122 39 0.24
“2-10” 102 30 0.23
“10-25” 517 82 0.14
“25-100” 102 30 0.23
“100-300” 31 12 0.28
“300-1000” 26 7 0.21
“1000-3000” 14 8 0.36
“3000-10000” 23 4 0.15
“10000+” 15 4 0.21

All correlations between activities[edit]

activity VAA PAA UWFW DWMF EAE BSOAFFW SVOAA WAAYWRWS UAAFPSG BABAFFW UWFS WAAYWRWL
vandalized an article (428) 100% 016% 061% 014% 087%[2] 076% 089% 060% 025% 094% 089% 091%
plagiarized an article (205) 035% 100% 056% 011% 064% 071% 079% 060% 030% 095% 093% 089%
used Wikipedia for work (1463) 017% 007% 100% 019% 065% 072% 074% 051% 014% 094% 078% 089%
donated to the Wikimedia Foundation (347) 017% 006% 081% 100% 078% 074% 079% 048% 014% 095% 076% 090%
edited an article (1364) 027% 009% 069% 019% 100% 073% 081% 053% 017% 093% 082% 091%
been suspicious of a fact from Wikipedia (1565) 020% 009% 067% 016% 064% 100% 077% 056% 016% 095% 078% 091%
seen vandalism on an article (1626) 023% 009% 066% 016% 068% 074% 100% 054% 016% 094% 080% 091%
wished an article you were reading was shorter (1112) 023% 011% 068% 015% 066% 079% 079% 100% 018% 096% 082% 095%
used an article for personal sexual gratification (327) 032% 018% 065% 014% 071% 079% 081% 061% 100% 098% 088% 092%
been amazed by a fact from Wikipedia (2073) 019% 009% 066% 015% 061% 071% 074% 051% 015% 100% 078% 090%
used Wikipedia for school (1725) 022% 011% 066% 015% 064% 071% 075% 053% 016% 094% 0100% 090%
wished an article you were reading was longer (1957) 020% 009% 066% 016% 063% 073% 076% 054% 015% 095% 079% 100%

Comments[edit]

General comments were also collected which have been dumped out (with personal information, attacks on individuals and valueless offensive content removed) at User:Jorgenev/research/Wikipedia subreddit user survey/edited list of comments.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Two minute survey. I'm doing a little research into the reddit-Wikipedia relationship.
  2. ^ There may have been some confusion as to if vandalizing an article counted as editing it