Forum:SH Archive/MIT Ethnographic Study on Wookieepedia - Your input requested

Hello Users of Wookieepedia,

My name is Ernest Alba. I am an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and I am doing an ethnographic study on the Wookieepedia community. In order to develop a prospectus on this study, I sent a preliminary questionnaire to Administrator Greyman a couple of weeks ago. Now that the project has been approved, I would now like to beg all of your indulgences in answering the expanded questionnaire about your experiences as writers and users of Wookieepedia. Honest and detailed answers would help tremendously (any answers would help tremendously!). If you have any more questions for me, feel free to email me at ealba(at)mit(dot)edu or look me up on my user page. You may send your responses privately to my email address or post them here or on my user page, if you'd like.

Sincerely, Ernest Alba

Survey Questions for Wookieepedia Users

General Questions 1. Who writes Wookieepedia? Is it evenly split between a small band of users who make a lot of edits and a large number of users who each make small contributions? 2. What type of editing is an administrator or an "elite" user likely to do versus a common user (e.g. reverting, polishing, revising vs. creation of new content)? 3. Is vandalism a large problem? 4. Wookieepedia is the largest Wikia site with over 54,000 articles. To what standards does Wookieepedia hold itself up to? Encyclopedia Britannica? Wikipedia? Memory Alpha? In other words, is this a professional or an amateur site?

Personal Questions 5. Why are you a Wookieepedia user? What are the incentives of contributing? 6. Is there a community identity? How do you see yourself as fitting into the community? Are you a spectator? Minor player? Integral cog? 7. How important are user pages? What are their purpose? 8. What is your view of fan fiction and fanon? 9. Do you feel as if writing for Wookieepedia places you inside the Star Wars universe? Or do your contributions represent a sacrifice (writing "boring" history instead of fan fiction) for the good of the Star Wars community - participating in a nobler cause?

10. Is there anything else you would like to say about your experience as a writer for Wookieepedia?