In svwp we have noticed exactly the same trends, over the same
timeframe. But as we are small we know what accounts etc are behind the
number etc.
As I wrote about a year ago, we have found that when an editor has made
more the 38000 edits (the corresponding number for enwp seems to be
around 80000) he/she is stuck and will not leave. In svwp this is only
around 45 and these growth with one or two a year (multiply with 10-20
to get corresponding for enwp). And it is from this group that the
increas in +100 edits
And while these "never" leaves those with fewer leaves earlier then a
few years ago (does not necessary relate to community climate, there are
also fewer "holes" to fill in nowadays).
This "explanation" also corresponds well with the mean "wikipadia age"
for contributes growth with half a yea r every year for every year that
passes.
Anders
Den 2015-09-11 kl. 04:39, skrev Erik Zachte:
James,
A) Should we value editors with many edits more than editors with just a few? Your
counter-example (editors who write a long article in one go offline) is canonical, and
probably uncontested, so you're stating the obvious, no need to use a loaded term like
'offensive', and to spell it out as if WereSpielChequers wouldn't know this,
or would disagree. I use the term 'core community' loosely myself from time to
time, knowing full well that any precise definition would be incomplete. Incidentally I
think 'very active editors' is a misnomer (which I started) for the same reason.
People can be very active editors offline per the same example. [1]
B) Agreed, we should be careful to interpret a trend (-change) in a very basic metric, or
what that metric actually tells us anyway. But again I think you're stating the
obvious. The only thing that surprises me is your timing: I never heard you utter these
nuances so much when veteran foundation staff and other core community members
overemphasized (in my opinion) countering editor decline as a primary target (I tried to
nuance this all along as much as I could).
So yes, 'editor count' is overly simplistic, and so is 'inflation rate',
'gross domestic product', 'population count'. All of these are overly
simplistic, and without further breakdown don't tell us much. Yet these simplistic
metrics survive, because everyone understands them, and much less people want to know the
underlying complexity (especially decision makers), and importantly: they are collected
consistently for a long time (more refined numbers suffer more easily from definition
creep, or being en vogue temporarily). The most refined metrics are often from one-off
studies, valuable but not gaining enough momentum for repeated collection.
I need to explain my statement which was re-quoted in this thread: "The growth seems
real to me". I first and formost meant "To my best knowledge the numbers are
reliable". I expect no bug or other artefact (WereSpielChequers asked me about that
specifically). The code is time-tested and stable. There is always a change that a hidden
bug surfaces in a changing environment, but I see no sign for that. So at face value the
growth is real then, more editors pass the threshold. But giving meaning to that figure is
a process of never ending dialectic.
Lastly, a more philosophical comment: shouldn't we rejoice if a partially understood
metric seems to give ground for optimism. IMO we should, as joy (and fear) provide the
incentive to dig deeper. Our news agencies make a living of incomplete news. Any
scientific knowledge is temporary at best, until falsified. I rejoiced when I read that
traffic accidents decreased in last 5 years.Then someone countered that road traffic
declined overall due to dip in economy, so the effect may be temporary and not systemic,
so I lost some joy. But I gained from the exchange.
Cheers,
Erik
--
Notes/details:
[1] I would be interested to see how often this happens: writing an article offline in
one go. My hunch is less and less, as more and more people get speedier access, and site
submits happen faster, thus reducing 'involutarily offline editing'.
[2] Specifics on the examples you gave:
I find some of your examples in your first mail a bit far-fetched. Very active editors
reversing each other ad infinitum, hmm, when was the last time you actually saw this? And
(spam)bots are excluded from out editor counts anyway as much as feasible. In general
edits on wp:en grew in 2015, while reverts stayed more or less the same:
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotEditsEN.png
In your second response you name some positive reasons why our editor count could be
growing, and they seem mostly plausible to me. But here is also room for nuance:
'Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so people can do more
edits in the same amount of time.' would be high on my list to investigate, and maybe
even be reason to question the gain. The uptick in January conincided with a major site
performance boost (faster PHP). I can imagine people who edit heavy articles like
'Obama' (heavy in terms of links etc, with iirc almost a minute of submit time),
would edit online in one go without intermittent submits, and now these same people went
back to precautionary intermittent submits, thus accomplishing same amount of work in more
edits, in which case our gain would be mostly our editors' peace of mind. Building on
this: perhaps part of the decline in previous years came from slowing submits?
(disclaimer : all of the above is only my personal opinion)
-----Original Message-----
From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 21:00
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community
For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually
around mid-to-late 2013. The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible first
with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per month), but
has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 edits per month).
This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila put in
place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement.
In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition. The cohort of editors who
registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than any other annual cohort
in every year from 2006 to 2014. If you choose any edit at random since 2006, the most
likely year that the account registered was 2006. That cohort, a legacy of
Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for
nearly a decade.
(2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, though not as
huge as 2006.) If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will finally lose their crown
in 2015. The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes
in 2015. It will also be the second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased
their total edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year
accounts.
I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic. I'm not sure we
should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more stable or
slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic collapse less likely.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have.
On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond
like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also
think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the
increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive
effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of
an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll
have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for
different cohorts of editors.
Pine
On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers
<
werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
> <
>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/
In_focus
>> We
> now have the August figures
> <https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm>, and August
> has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new
> trend. The
English
> Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more
live edits in
> mainspace
than
> for any August since 2010. Across all
Wikipedias combined the
> figures
are
> up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase
on August 2014,
> though
this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty
offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a
month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100
edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the
normal term
is
"very active editors" to avoid implicit
disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is]
down
across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you
could
say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers
continue to decline but
meta-editors
are up",
- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
even
- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
attempts to
fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits?
Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits"
but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful
Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one
admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to
evaluate this?
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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