Submissions/Novi Sad Physics Students using Wikipedia

This is a rejected submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

146

Title of the submission

Novi Sad Physics Students using Wikipedia

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Gyuráki Mihály

E-mail address

gyuraki87@stcable.net

Username

Mátyás

Country of origin

Serbia

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

University of Novi Sad, Department of Physics

Personal homepage or blog

n/a

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

In this work there shall be presented the results of a survey at the Department of Physics of the University of Novi Sad. In this survey, students of physics are asked to fill an anonymous form, which is to ascertain the following: do the students know of Wikipedia and related projects and how they came to know of them; what they use Wikipedia for; do they edit Wikipedia; do they use Wikipedia as a cited source for their work; etc.

With answers to these and similar questions, the connection between physics students and the Wikimedia Project can be explored, with special focus on this being the University of Novi Sad, a university in post-socialist south-eastern Europe, in the multiethnic and multi-lingual region of Vojvodina in Serbia. For this reason, the students shall be asked to provide their age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality when filling the anonymous form, and their understanding of languages (except for Serbian). In respect of these questions, the students shall also be asked which language editions of Wikipedia do they edit (if at all), and their reason for doing so.

As a result, there will hopefully emerge some connections between the different factors of the students (such as language prowess or age) and their usage of Wikipedia and projects of the Wikimedia Foundation in general. As the relatively large number of factors dictates a large number of possible correlations between them, only the students of physics shall be asked to participate in the taking of this survey; as I am doing this work on my own, gathering a database larger than I can process would be fully unnecessary. The analyses of the collected data may not be my area of expertise, as I am a student of physics and not of social studies or humanities, but I do have faith in my own ability to discern what my colleagues are thinking.

I apologise for such a poorly written abstract, but the work itself is not written yet, and I can't really have a solid notion as to what my presentation of the work itself will be like until I actually do write it - what I shall undoubtedly do by at least June. The whole situation is made more complicated by the fact that I have no means to get to Washington D.C. and present the would-be audience this work if I am not granted a scholarship. However, I am confident that at least some aspect of this work that I am doing is relevant for the Wikimedia Foundation and the wider Wikipedia community, and that I shall be able to present it to you at this year's Wikimania.

Track

Research, Analysis, and Education

Length of presentation/talk: 25 Minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Slides and graphs

Special request as to time of presentations

n/a

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