**Please provide all the following information:**
* **Context.** Provide a short paragraph with some background context for your request, please include links to relevant material.
The Incident Reporting System project aims to improve how Wikimedia contributors access support when they experience harmful incidents. We have released an MVP on pt-wiki focused on emergency flows. In Q1 we would like to build a prototype for non-emergency support.
Current non-emergency help pathways vary widely across communities, often lacking clarity or consistency. We hypothesize that mapping these pathways across a representative sample of wikis will reveal common patterns and divergence points. These insights will help us design standardized, accessible support options while respecting community-specific needs.
* **Description.**What is your request about?
We are asking the research team to investigate how different sized (small, medium, large) Wikimedia communities structure and surface pathways for users to report harmful incidents. This involves identifying the specific steps, roles, and entry points involved in these reporting processes across a sample of wikis. This includes documenting how users currently report harmful incidents, who responds, where information is located, and how visible/helpful these pathways are. The goal is to identify patterns that can inform standardized design approaches, while also surfacing where customization is necessary due to local practices or cultural norms.
* **Expected Deliverable.** What is the ideal outcome or result of your request?
The ideal outcome includes:
- Mapping out the current support routes on a representative sample of small, medium, and large wikis.
- In-depth analysis of non-emergency flows for pt-wiki where an MVP has already been deployed
- Analyze similarities and differences across wikis to identify common reporting structures and pain points.
- Recommend which elements of the support systems can be standardized across wikis.
- Highlight where unique community contexts necessitate bespoke or flexible solutions.
- Practical design inputs that inform the next iteration of the Incident Reporting System's help flow design.
* **Estimated Effort.** Please provide an estimate of the amount of work needed to complete this task, if known.
Not sure. We have some research already, we just need to fill in the gaps. Hopefully not more than 4–6 weeks. Scoping work itself may need extra time.
Note that this task needs to run parallel to design prototyping efforts, so the team will require and expect iterative updates from this project.
* **Priority** Please indicate a priority of your task and a small description of what it would unlock for you. We ask you to leave this task as “needs triage” since your request will go through a Backlog refinement process where our team will prioritize the work.
This work is **high priority** as insights from this research will be necessary to help prototype the non-emergency support workflow, which is slated to be finished by end of Q1.
I need this task resolved in:
[ ] 1 month.
[x] 3 months. (by the end of Q1)
[ ] 6 months.
[ ] Whenever you get to it :-)
* **Other.** Do you have any other questions or comments ?
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**For use by WMF Research team; please leave everything below as it is:**
1. Does the request serve one of the existing Research team's audiences? If yes, choose the primary audience. (1 of 4)
2. What is the type of work requested?
3. What is the impact of responding to this request?
[] Support a technology or policy need of one or more WM projects
[] Advance the understanding of the WM projects.
[] Something else. If you choose this option, please explain briefly the impact below.