Sneha's Dissertation Timeline

Sneha needs to write a prospectus and complete a dissertation in order to graduate from Northwestern. This page contains the project timeline and current to do list.

Outline of Prospectus

The dissertation will consist of three studies:

• Study 1: The TWA study - this is currently a paper submission to CSCW.
• Study 2: The Message Walls study - this will use data from wikia wikis that changed user talk pages to message walls, and see if that impacted newcomer retention in any way
• Study 3: The Edit-a-thon study - this will examine whether 'offline' events such as edit-a-thons contribute to newcomer retention on Wikipedia

Milestones

• Settle on a committee (and ask them to be on my committee)
• Complete prospectus
• Complete study 2
• Complete study 3
• Write everything up
• Defend thesis
• Profit!

Timeline

Summer 2016

• ASAP
  • Finalize committee members and ask them to be on my committee
    • Specifically ask around about our top choice for the fourth committee member who may not yet be publicly named
  • Obtain message wall data set
• Friday, July 15th
  • Complete a detailed proposal for study 2
• Friday, August 12th
  • Complete a detailed proposal for study 3
• Thursday, August 25th
  • Complete a full draft of prospectus, and send it to Aaron for comments
• Thursday, September 8th
  • Make revisions and send out the draft to entire committee

Fall 2016

• Thursday, October 13th
  • Send out FINAL draft of prospectus to committee
• late-October/early-November
  • Set up a meeting with committee members to defend prospectus

Winter 2016

• Work on message walls study