User:Commprac01

University of Washington

Established	1861
Location	Seattle , Washington

In April, our research group gathered together several editors and asked them what they would like to find out about fellow Wikipedians when interacting with them. As our end goal is to create an embedded application that helps people quickly know more about others' history and activity on Wikipedia, we felt our design would be much more useful if it were based on insights from Wikipedians. Our participants gave generously of their time and provided us with lots of interesting possibilities for our application.

Based on those editors’ feedback, we created a few different images designed to quickly communicate the pattern of someone's various activities on Wikipedia. We are now looking for your feedback on how useful these images are to you. We would appreciate it if you would take a few minutes of your time (less than 10 minutes) to take our survey and tell us what you think! No identifying information is collected. The data is being gathered strictly for use in university research.

Willing to help us out by taking the survey? Click this link. Please feel free to share this with other Wikipedians!

Want to know more about our research group? Visit http://courses.washington.edu/commprac.

Thanks for your time! -- 2009-06-08

A big thank you to all who participated. It means a lot to us that you would take time out of your busy schedules to share your thoughts with us. We hope that you also got something out of interacting offline with other Wikipedians!

As mentioned during the focus group, the brainstormed ideas will inform a visualization/reputation system that we will be creating in the near future. Once we have a few potential designs, we will be again contacting Wikipedians for their feedback to make sure that what we design is of use to the community. However, the next round of input will be done completely online and will take considerably less of your time, if you chose to participate. Stay tuned!

Thanks again to everyone who expressed interest. -- 2009-04-21

Are you an editor on Wikipedia or know one? Researchers at the University of Washington (Seattle Campus) are seeking Wikipedians to participate in a focus group. The purpose is to have you tell us what you would like to find out about fellow Wikipedians when interacting with them. We'll use your input to design a new application that will help you access this information. Our goal is to then give the code to the Wikipedia community to edit and tweak as it sees fit.
The session will focus on these research questions:

• When interacting with other Wikipedians, perhaps on a discussion page, what information would you want to know about their other activities in Wikipedia?
• What would be the benefit of knowing that information?

Lively discussion encouraged! We are looking for people who have had at least one direct interaction on Wikipedia with another editor or just wanted to know more information about another editor with whom they might interact. If you have friends who are also editors, please pass this invitation on to the them. Sessions will be held on Wednesday, April 8 (6 pm to 8 pm) and Saturday, April 18 (10 am to noon) on the UW Seattle campus. (You only need to attend one.) Directions will be sent when you register.

If you are interested in attending a focus group session, please RSVP here. -- 2009-03-09

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Additional details about our research group are available here.

I am a grad student who is currently researching ways to help Wikipedians visualize what type of work and activities are valued within Wikipedia. I am a novice Wikipedia editor, but I've loved and respected the concept since I read "The Professor and the Madman."