Wikipedia:Research help/Pilot report

Summary
Many readers are unfamiliar with how Wikipedia works and how to use it responsibly. To improve reader understanding of research using Wikipedia, we added a link to a Research help page in the reference section of 10,000 articles under WikiProjects Medicine and Military history.

  • During the trial period there were 24,862 pageviews (228/day) to the Research help page, of which 12,838 (133/day) came from the targeted Wikiprojects.
  • At that rate, expansion to all English Wikipedia articles would approach 70 million annual pageviews, declining somewhat over time due to exposure and familiarity.
  • There were six on-wiki discussions about the page and the link to it, attended almost entirely by highly experienced editors, demonstrating a generally negative response.
  • We separately collected 43 survey responses from people who visited the page.
  • 75% of the survey respondents thought that a small link on Wikipedia articles to the Research help page would be helpful to Wikipedia readers.
  • Closer analysis of survey responses shows far stronger support from those with under 100 edits (96% support), and far more opposition from those with 100+ edits (53% oppose).

It is clear from our analysis that newer and non-editors liked this intervention more by far, while most of the opposition to the page and the link came from experienced editors.

This suggests a need for further discussion with the community to build consensus for future experimentation and also about which audience's opinion to prioritize in interface changes that are reader and new-editor focused. We suggest a stage 2 pilot that reasonably broadens the number of pages viewed in both number and diversity in order to collect better data, while also mitigating frustration from experienced editors by having the link only appear to new and non-editors. Community consensus will be vital to continuing experimentation, and we view it as well worth future engagement.