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Who are our readers?

I found Folantin's remark that we tend to imagine our readers in our own images to be profound and inspiring. I realized, we don't really know who our readers are, or why they are reading our articles.

So I decided to do a poll. I have created a survey at SurveyMonkey, and put a link to the survey on four articles that I wrote or had a hand in editing (Death and the Maiden Quartet, Große Fuge, String Quartet No. 2 (Mendelssohn), and String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn).

So far (the poll started two days ago), I have had 22 responses. When I get 30 responses, I will report the results here.

Of course, respondents to the poll constitute a small percentage of the people visiting the articles, as judged by the number of hits. Nonetheless, I think the results are significant. It is fair to assume that those that do not respond to the poll are, by and large, casual readers. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:47, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I find those banners totally inappropriate; they convey the impression of some sort of Wikipedia approved survey and I'm sure they violate scores of policies. I agree with User:CenturionZ 1 who removed it from "Death and the Maiden Quartet"; Ravpapa later re-added it. I suggest they be all removed. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I think this actually an interesting idea. Eusebeus (talk) 12:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Ravpapa, doesn't matter how many edits you have to your name. Vandalism is still vandalism. Putting an ugly green uncollapsible box saying "please take this short survey" is "in-your-face" market research and completely inappropiate for an encyclopedia. If you want to do this, you should place it in the talk page. Centy – reply• contribs – 13:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't know whether adding this survey box violated any policies, but even if it did the intention is obviously constructive, and calling it "vandalism" like that is unhelpful and uncalled for.  --Lambiam 23:15, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
It's not vandalism, and it doesn't violate any policy (I don't think, maybe WP:NOT...kinda). It probably violates guidelines though, and probably technically shouldn't have been put on, at least not without some sort of previous discussion. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It is only not vandalism and obviously constructive in context... i.e. with this little spiel here where Ravpapa explains the reasons for the poll. However, Ravpapa put the surveys on pages without any prior discussion or edits in his edit history as to what he was doing. With the information I had on seeing the boxes, it was a case of vandalism as the page's integrity had been comprimised by a delibrate edit. I don't care about the fact Ravpapa has many legitimate edits - how I'm I supposed to know for example his account wasn't comprimised? Also it seems my deletion and calling of vandalism caused Ravpapa to post his explanations which is not unhelpful. Whether it was uncalled for is subjective. Frankly, I call it like I see them and if an IP address had made that edit I'd call it vandalism. If someone makes similar edits without any explanation on a talk page about what's going on, I'd call it vandalism. I stand by my call. Also, like to point out this really should be in WP:CM under whose remit all those pages with the surveys fall under. Centy – reply• contribs – 04:16, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It was not addition, removal, or change of content, which is what vandalism is about. When you see an edit you don't agree with by a generally reasonable editor, you should not assume right off that it is vandalism unless it is truly egregious vandalism; instead, assume good faith. If you revert in the spirit of "Bold, revert, discuss", then don't use an incendiary edit summary. The polite thing to do is to leave a note on the editor's talk page.  --Lambiam 14:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I suggest we abandon this extremely unproductive thread of conversation. I was pissed off about being called a vandal, but I am no longer pissed off. Centy is entitled to his opinion, and may even be right (even if I disagree). Anyway, it is history now. I will publish the results in the next couple of days. Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 16:51, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
And another comment. 30 responses is completely meaningless a poll and is far too small a sample. How can you be sure you haven't just got a whole bunch of regular editors? Heck 2 of your responses were from me clicking at random trying to discern what was going on. Centy – reply• contribs – 13:31, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

While I have some sympathy with the 'contra' remarks above (and I am also, it happens, a respondee as I needed to check 'Death and the Maiden' for something or other) I also think Ravpapa's point is important. Indeed the responses above might indicate that we are all taking in each other's washing, to some extent. I sort of hope that what I write might be of use and interest to students and to the general lay person, but I am aware that I may be kidding myself. The only feedback I get in general is when I tread on some other editor's toes.--Smerus (talk) 14:04, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I am glad to see that my user survey has stirred interest. I agree with Centy that 30 is not a particularly significant sample, but, unfortunately, if I want a larger sample I will have to pay money to the site hosting my survey. As for the possibility that the survey is a violation of policy, I know of no policy that it violates, but if someone does find such a policy, we should certainly remove it posthaste. In any case it will be gone by morning (my time), since I will have gathered more than 30 responses.
I will publish the results of the survey in the next few days. Those who find the idea of the survey offensive do not, of course, have to read them. Personally, I have found them quite interesting so far, and plan to propose at the media Wiki that someone develop a survey tool that we editors can use generally to gather reader responses. As I have indicated elsewhere, I think it is important that we know something about our readers; I, at least, and I am sure some others on the project, are writing for them, and not just for our own egos. --Ravpapa (talk) 17:06, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I for one applaud your initiative; we've become such a bureaucracy, project-wide, and "consensus" has become so Himalayan a summit to attain, that sometimes you just have to be bold and try something new, in this case attempting to collect a little bit of interesting data. It is a wiki after all; do as you will, mindful that someone may undo as they will. Do let us know what you get from those 30 responses. Antandrus (talk) 01:51, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

You know, there really ought to be some official process whereby we can determine exactly who our readers are and solicit their opinions of the articles without them having to edit talkpages and us having to trawl those talk pages to collate the data. Some kind of WikiReaders forum perhaps? Is it worth suggesting this to the Foundation? I also applaude Ravpapa's intitiative; to be fair he probably used the only available method to do his research, though the method was certainly ill-advised --Jubilee♫clipman 04:03, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Survey results

Here is a summary of the results of the survey I performed on readers of five Wikipedia articles on classical music compositions. Readers who want to see the original data of the survey or the detailed analysis of the participant responses are welcome to see it here.

Introduction

First, I apologize to all those members of the project who took offense at this initiative. Since this survey was definitely a deviation from the way we usually do things at Wikipedia, I probably should have raised the proposal on the project page first, before diving in head first. However, I knew that, were I to do this, there would be no consensus about the survey, and it never would have gone ahead. Since I considered it to be an important enough experiment, I decided to take the plunge, and talk later.

The samples

For the survey, I selected five articles on string quartets: Death and the Maiden Quartet, Große Fuge,String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn), String Quartet No. 2 (Mendelssohn), and String Quartet No. 15 (Beethoven). Two of these I consider to be among the best things I have written for Wikipedia, one I consider okay, and two I consider to be mediocre to middling bad. I was interested in finding out, among other things, whether readers shared my own opinions of these articles.

I had 38 responses to the poll. One was clearly a crank response, and I deleted it. I estimate that this is a sample of about 6 - 10 percent of the readers of these articles, based on the following calculation: The articles get a combined average of 400 hits per day. Of these, I estimate that about 100 are accidents - people who arrived at the article page with no intent to read it. For those who read the article, I estimate that each reader generated from 1 to 4 hits on the article (each time a reader clicks on a table of contents entry, or follows a wikilink to another article then returns to the original article, he generates a new hit). Based on this, I estimate that the articles had a total of from 100 to 150 readers per day, or 300 to 450 readers during the course of the three days that the poll ran.

As Centy pointed out in an earlier thread, 37 is not a particularly significant sample statistically. Nonetheless, it is certainly large enough to draw conclusions, especially where clear patterns exist (which they do). It is clearly not a representative cross-section of the readers; participation in the survey was voluntary, and 90 percent of the readers chose not to participate. It is fair to assume that nonparticipants included more casual readers - readers, for example, for whom infoboxes might be useful. But, when we consider issues of policy, we can't very well take into account the opinions of people who have expressed none. So the fact that the sample is not representative does not bother me. On the contrary, the sample represents 100 percent of the readers who felt the article important enough to participate in the survey, and those are the readers we should be concerned with.

One would guess that the subject of these articles (classical and romantic string quartets) is arcane enough to attract a rather specific audience, and this is indeed borne out by the results presented below. For this reason, I think the analysis of the readership is not necessarily applicable to articles on composers, on musical genres or periods, and other topics of more general interest.

Analysis of readership

Age  
15 - 18 5
18 - 21 9
22 - 30 8
31 - 40 1
41 - 60 9
No Response 1
Over 60 4
Grand Total 37
Occupation  
College student 7
Graduate student 6
Grammar school or high school student 8
I am retired 3
I work 13
Grand Total 37
How knowledgeable do you consider yourself about classical music?  
Not very knowledgeable 7
Somewhat knowledgeable 18
Very knowledgeable 12
Grand Total 37
What are your musical activities?  
I am a professional musician 2
I am an amateur musician 19
I don't have a lot of connection with classical music 1
I don't play, but I listen to a lot of music 8
I used to play an instrument, but have given it up 5
Grand Total 37
How do you use Wikipedia?  
I am a contributor, but not specifically of music articles 2
I have made occasional edits to Wikipedia, but am not a regular contributor 8
I read Wikipedia frequently, but am not a contributor 25
I read Wikipedia infrequently 1
No Response 1
Grand Total 37
Why did you read this article?  
I am learning to play the piece 1
I found the article through a link from another Wikipedia article 5
I heard the piece and wanted to read about it 14
I just arrived at the article by chance 2
I needed to learn about the piece for a school assignment 5
I read about the piece elsewhere, and wanted to read more 6
Other (please specify) - looking for music samples to listen to 1
Other (please specify) - needed the opus # 1
Other (please specify) - saw a reference ot the article elsewhere in Wikipedia 1
Other (please specify) - wanted to listen to it 1
Grand Total 37

Discussion

More than half the respondents (22) were under the age of 30, and more than half (21) were students. A significant majority of respondents (30) considered themselves knowledgeable about classical music; only seven considered themselves "not very knowledgeable", and none of them considered themselves to be "pretty ignorant". A significant majority (21) were practicing musicians (professional or amateur), and the others either once played, or "listen to a lot of classical music." In other words, this is not an ignorant crowd - they come to these articles with a solid grounding in classical music.

School has a lot to do with reading these articles. Six of the respondents (17%) said they read the articles specifically because they were doing a school assignment. One other was looking for the opus number of a work.

Two respondents said they accessed the article because they wanted to listen to it (obviously hoping there were linked or embedded media). Three others specified in comments that they enjoyed or looked for media files illustrating the articles.

I think these results have some impact on issues of policy that have been discussed in this and other classical music forums:

  • This is an informed audience, for whom infoboxes about classical works would have little utility.
  • Media files are very important. Some readers come to Wikipedia specifically to listen to the music, not so much to read about it. We should definitely make an effort to find and incorporate more media files, and to display them prominently in articles.

Responses to the articles

  2. Did you find this article useful?          
1. Which article did you read? Somewhat useful Yes Yes, very Grand Total Comment 1 rating Comment 2 rating
Death and the Maiden quartet 1 8 4 13 3.5 4
Grosse Fuge 4 5 2 11 2 1
String Quartet No. 15 (Beethoven) 1 5 4 10 2.2 2
String Quartet No. 2 (Mendelssohn)   1   1    
String Quartets Op. 20 (Haydn)     2 2 3  
Grand Total 6 19 12 37 2.8 2.5

Discussion

There were three questions which related specifically to readers reactions to the article: one multiple choice question ("Did you find this article useful?"), and two text response questions, where respondents could write their comments. I rated these comments on a scale of 1 (critical) to 4 (very enthusiastic). None of the comments were negative ("This is a bad article").

In general, but not with a lot of consistency, readers agreed with my own evaluations of my articles - they liked the ones I thought were good, and they were critical of the ones I thought were bad. In general, however, they were a lot more positive about the articles than I am myself; even the weak articles most of the readers found to be quite good.

Criticisms were generally quite explicit and accurate. Some readers wanted more references ("some sections (e.g. "Analysis") don't say where they got their information, so I don't know how trustworthy and authoritative it is"), and more detail ("It would have been nice to see a bit more of an in depth analysis (some examples from the score could really help)"). Others complained that some of the analyses were too technical, and one reader actually asked for less detail.

All of the comments appear in the raw data file, at the link referenced above.

Conclusions

This survey was inspired by Folantin's comment that we tend to view our readers in our own image. I found that, to a large extent, at least in my case, this is true. Although I am no longer a student, and no longer a youngster, I am a musician (amateur) and I do consider myself to be knowledgeable about music. So I have a lot in common with my readers.

I found a lot of the comments to be a great ego boost ("VERY informative, much more so than the majority of classical music articles on wikipedia!"), and that, in itself, made the survey worthwhile for me. But beyond that, I will certainly take some of the specific comments into account when editing these articles, and others as well.

As I said, I don't think the readers of these articles are the same readers that read more general music articles, so I don't know if we can actually use the results in operative decisions in the project (for example, as an argument for or against infoboxes in composer bios).

I do think, though, that this is a tool that can be of great utility to writers, and can have a real impact on the useability of the Wikipedia. And I intend at the Strategy Wiki to propose development of a survey tool that editors can insert into their articles to get reader feedback.

Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 14:02, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

do please let us know about your proposals at Strategy Wiki, I would support this development in principle. And many thanks for your initative.--Smerus (talk) 14:47, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for taking the time to do this, Ravpapa. I, too, support the idea of developing a survey tool. As I said above, we really do need to have a much clerarer idea of who our our readers are and of what their opinions of our articles are. We are, after all, writing to be read, ultimately. We editors use many different approaches to achieve that ultimate goal and often lose sight of that goal and of both the current and the prosective readership --Jubilee♫clipman 17:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your interest. I have started a discussion of reader surveys here, you are invited to jump in. --Ravpapa (talk) 16:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Joseph Hallman

68.81.92.31 (talk · contribs) has recently added this composer to several lists and articles. Possible self promo... However, the composer seems well enough established to remain on WP as long as he is listed as C21st only. Thoughts? --Jubilee♫clipman 17:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

In the references for his article I see one passing mention in the New York Times, in their article on someone else, and a single-paragraph review on one composition. None of the biographical material is verifiable by any reliable source as far as I can tell. Someone (probably the composer) has been adding his name to all manner of lists and articles, using a home IP (68.81.92.31) and a school IP 130.91.177.96 (talk · contribs) (University of Pennsylvania). Is he notable? Can anyone find a reliable source about him? Googling a bit, I can't, -- yet. Antandrus (talk) 17:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
this seems to me to be entirely self-promotion. I would put it up for delete.--Smerus (talk) 18:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Agreeing with you both now that I have had a chance to check the article more thoroughly. Note that Jerome Kohl has reverted some additions of this article's link elsewhere and that he and I have had a brief discussion about this on his talk page, also. I'll Google further but I suspect AfD (or even PROD) will be the result... --Jubilee♫clipman 18:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Strange subcategorisation

As a prelude to my listing the miscatted articles, I list the following which are were all subcategories of Category:Classical composers according to [a previous version of] this scan (digging 5 levels below the top cat):

  1. 20th-century_classical_composers
  2. 21st-century_classical_composers
  3. African_American_classical_composers
  4. Baroque_composers
  5. Byzantine_composers
  6. Classical_composers_of_church_music
  7. Classical_era_composers
  8. Composers_of_classical_music_by_nationality
  9. Glee_composers
  10. Hymnographers
  11. Madrigal_composers
  12. Medieval_composers
  13. Neoromantic_composers
  14. Opera_composers
  15. Postmodern_composers
  16. Renaissance_composers
  17. Romantic_composers
  18. Women_classical_composers
  19. Ars_subtilior_composers
  20. Chanson_composers
  21. Dutch_Renaissance_composers
  22. English_Renaissance_composers
  23. Experimental_composers
  24. Franco-Flemish_Renaissance_composers
  25. Franz_Schubert
  26. French_Renaissance_composers
  27. German_Renaissance_composers
  28. Hector_Berlioz
  29. Indian_composers_of_Western_classical_music
  30. Italian_Renaissance_composers
  31. Mexican_composers_of_classical_music
  32. Modernist_composers
  33. Neoclassical_composers
  34. Organists_and_composers_in_the_North_German_tradition
  35. Organists_and_composers_in_the_South_German_tradition
  36. Quattrocento_composers
  37. Spanish_Renaissance_composers
  38. Tomás_de_Torrejón_y_Velsco
  39. Trecento_composers
  40. Trobairitz
  41. Troubadours
  42. Trouvères
  43. Compositions_by_Franz_Schubert
  44. Compositions_by_Hector_Berlioz
  45. Galician-Portuguese_troubadours
  46. Les_Six
  47. Compositions_by_Francis_Poulenc
  48. Compositions_by_Germaine_Tailleferre
  49. Lieder_composed_by_Franz_Schubert
  50. Operas_by_Franz_Schubert
  51. Operas_by_Hector_Berlioz
  52. Piano_sonatas_by_Franz_Schubert
  53. String_quartets_by_Franz_Schubert
  54. Symphonies_by_Franz_Schubert
  55. Ballets_by_Francis_Poulenc
  56. Operas_by_Francis_Poulenc

While most are clearly categories intended to contain composers, several are not: Compositions_by_X, for example. These are clearly miscategorised and I will sort them later today. I also found several composers and the article Classical music written in collaboration in the top category, which to my mind should be a container category (i.e. containing other categories only which then contain the articles—in this case articles on individuals, not groups nor the music itself). I have already sorted those. The miscatted cats are odd though. Any ideas how they got there? --Jubilee♫clipman 06:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah. Just spotted Category:Franz_Schubert and Category:Hector_Berlioz which probably explains their other cats. Not sure about Poulenc and Tailleferre, however... Category:Tomás_de_Torrejón_y_Velsco shouldn't be there either. I'll get to it and sort the tree out properly. Just thought you should know for future reference, however --Jubilee♫clipman 06:26, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Sorted it. I removed Schubert's and Berlioz' cats (and recatted the later under Category:Categories named after composers). Poulenc and Tailleferre were under Category:Les Six (of course). I removed the latter. It took a while to find Tomás de Torrejón y Velsco: he was under opera composers even though he has no article and the cat actually contains only a file. Next thing to deal with then... --Jubilee♫clipman 06:46, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
There are still a few other oddities though: Category:Spanish_Renaissance_composers is empty, for one --Jubilee♫clipman 06:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
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