I think Issa might write a longer reply later, and also update the post with a summary section, but I just wanted to make a quick correction: the college-educated SurveyMonkey population we sampled in fact did not use Wikipedia a lot (in S2, CEYP had fewer heavy Wikipedia users than the general population).
It’s worth noting that the general SurveyMonkey population as well as the college-educated SurveyMonkey population used Wikipedia very little, and one of our key findings was the extent to which usage is skewed to a small subset of the population that uses it heavily (although almost everybody has heard of it and used it at some point). Also, the responses to S1Q2 show that the general population rarely seeks Wikipedia actively, in contrast with the small subset of heavy users (including many SSC readers, people who filled my survey through Facebook).
Your summary of the post is an interesting take on it (and consistent with your perspective and goals) but the conclusions Issa and I drew (especially regarding short-term value) were somewhat different. In particular, both in terms of the quantity of traffic (over a reasonably long time horizon) and the quality and level of engagement with pages, Wikipedia does better than a lot of online content. Notably, it does best in terms of having sustained traffic, as opposed to a lot of “news” that trends for a while and then drops sharply (in marketing lingo, Wikipedia content is “evergreen”).
I think WP editing can be a good idea, but one has to accept that the payoff is not going to arrive anytime soon. I don’t think I started noticing much impact from my NGE or Star Wars or other editing projects for years, though I eventually did begin noticing places where authors were clearly being influenced by my work (or in some cases, bordering on plagiarism). It’s entirely viable to do similar work off Wikipedia—my own website is quite ‘evergreen’ in terms of traffic.
This sort of long-term implicit payoff makes it hard to evaluate. I don’t believe the results of this survey help much in evaluating WP contributions because I am skeptical people are able to meaningfully recall their WP usage or the causal impact on their beliefs. I bet that if one dumped respondents’ browser histories, one would find higher usage rates. One might need to try to measure the causal impact in some more direct way. I think I’ve seen over the years a few experiments along this line in use of scientific publications or external databases: for example, one could randomly select particular papers or concepts, insert them into Wikipedia as appropriate, and look for impacts on subsequent citations or Google search trends. Just as HN referrals underestimates the traffic impact of getting to the front page of HN, WP pageviews may underestimate (or overestimate) impact of WP edits.
I think Issa might write a longer reply later, and also update the post with a summary section, but I just wanted to make a quick correction: the college-educated SurveyMonkey population we sampled in fact did not use Wikipedia a lot (in S2, CEYP had fewer heavy Wikipedia users than the general population).
It’s worth noting that the general SurveyMonkey population as well as the college-educated SurveyMonkey population used Wikipedia very little, and one of our key findings was the extent to which usage is skewed to a small subset of the population that uses it heavily (although almost everybody has heard of it and used it at some point). Also, the responses to S1Q2 show that the general population rarely seeks Wikipedia actively, in contrast with the small subset of heavy users (including many SSC readers, people who filled my survey through Facebook).
Your summary of the post is an interesting take on it (and consistent with your perspective and goals) but the conclusions Issa and I drew (especially regarding short-term value) were somewhat different. In particular, both in terms of the quantity of traffic (over a reasonably long time horizon) and the quality and level of engagement with pages, Wikipedia does better than a lot of online content. Notably, it does best in terms of having sustained traffic, as opposed to a lot of “news” that trends for a while and then drops sharply (in marketing lingo, Wikipedia content is “evergreen”).
I think WP editing can be a good idea, but one has to accept that the payoff is not going to arrive anytime soon. I don’t think I started noticing much impact from my NGE or Star Wars or other editing projects for years, though I eventually did begin noticing places where authors were clearly being influenced by my work (or in some cases, bordering on plagiarism). It’s entirely viable to do similar work off Wikipedia—my own website is quite ‘evergreen’ in terms of traffic.
This sort of long-term implicit payoff makes it hard to evaluate. I don’t believe the results of this survey help much in evaluating WP contributions because I am skeptical people are able to meaningfully recall their WP usage or the causal impact on their beliefs. I bet that if one dumped respondents’ browser histories, one would find higher usage rates. One might need to try to measure the causal impact in some more direct way. I think I’ve seen over the years a few experiments along this line in use of scientific publications or external databases: for example, one could randomly select particular papers or concepts, insert them into Wikipedia as appropriate, and look for impacts on subsequent citations or Google search trends. Just as HN referrals underestimates the traffic impact of getting to the front page of HN, WP pageviews may underestimate (or overestimate) impact of WP edits.