It would be interesting to see both a description of current editors
in terms of their editing pattern and frequency, and a description of
the editing histories of everyone who has edited in the past year.

To do this, it would be useful to cluster editing patterns into
* classification of editing style by recent editing pattern and frequency.
* classification of editing histories by their shape and change over time.

Editing style give a sense of the type of editor+editing over a given
period [week? month?].  Editing history suggests an editor lifecycle
and where in that cycle the editor would be.


  

average time a user who does an edit has been registered.
    

I like this measure.

SJ

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Luca de Alfaro <luca@dealfaro.org> wrote:
  

It's difficult to tell when a person leaves, because ... you never know if a
contribution they made is the last one.
A measure would be "how many users have done an edit in the last month", and
this is actually an incredibly simple DB query to run (how fast it runs, is
another question).  This can tell you how the number of users is evolving.
 Hey, I could run this on my wikitrust database, if the Foundation does not
wish to do this :-)
Another measure, which is slightly harder but not much to compute, is the
average time a user who does an edit has been registered.
Together these two figures (across time) could give you a pretty good
picture of what is going on.
Luca

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Felipe Ortega <glimmer_phoenix@yahoo.es>
wrote:
    

Hello guys.

First of all, kudos for this initiative! It's great that all researchers
in this list can get to know the names and interests of WMF staff working on
same topics.

Additional context for Piotr. Believe me, it's really challenging to
define a set of clear, and *exact* conditions to consider that any
wikipedian ceased to contribute.

For our analysis published by WSJ last November, we followed similar
requirements to those in the Former Contributors Survey. In particular, we
established 3 months of inactivity as a "reasonable" period to consider that
an editor took a long break. The main difference is that in the Survey they
focus on editors who reached at least a reasonable number of lifetime
revisions (20-99), while we included everyone.

I already broke down the net gain curve for different cohorts, according
to number of edits, and there is no significant change in the trends (I
believe that the meaningful info is the slope, not the numbers).

For what is worth, I think the best constructive critic we received about
this approach came from Jimmy Wales. Jimmy explained a useful twist to the
methodology, that they seem to be applying for internal metrics at Wikia.

Instead of trying to measure how many people "left", which will always
have methodological drawbacks, we can ask the following question: what
percentage of editors survived up to a certain age?

For instance: what's the percentage of editors who made at least 20
lifetime edits who are still active one month later? Three months later? And
then: is that percentage improving, constant, or getting worse over time?

Indeed, limiting the scope to recorded revisions (the only event we can
certainly measure) we avoid many of these methodological problems.

I'm still spending time with flagged-revisions, but in case Howie or
anybody else is interested, it shouldn't be difficult to have a look at
this.

BTW, Howie thanks for uploading the survey slides. Terrific the work you
did, guys.

Cheers,
Felipe.

--- El mar, 10/8/10, Piotr Konieczny <piokon@post.pl> escribió:

      

De: Piotr Konieczny <piokon@post.pl>
Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] WMF Staff Introductions.
Para: "Research into Wikimedia content and communities"
<wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Fecha: martes, 10 de agosto, 2010 20:21
Welcome!

I have to say that
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results
of
which I've just learned from your post is an excellent
piece of
research, one that was needed for a very long time.

One question comes to mind: we now, roughly, how many
editors we are
gaining per months. Are there any estimates on how many we
are losing
(per month, year, total)? I cannot find such numbers in
that survey.

--
Piotr Konieczny

Parul Vora wrote:
        

Hello everyone,

We (most of the current staff at the Wikimedia
          

Foundation currently
        

engaging in research) had a chance to meet some of you
          

at Wikisym and
        

Wikimania this year and thought it would be nice to
          

introduce ourselves
        

and say hi to all of you! All of us have joined WMF in
          

the past two
        

years and are working on projects or research
          

questions that may be
        

relevant or of interest to all of you. Also, as far as
          

I know, we are
        

all new to this list and will hopefully be talking and
          

collaborating
        

with you more in the future - both here and on the
          

Meta Research page.
        

So, in no particular order, some introductions from
          

all of us:
        

  From Nimish <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Nimish_Gautam>
(ngautam@wikimedia.org):
          

Hi, I'm Nimish Gautam. I started with the
        

foundation in 2009 doing development for the Usability
          

Initiative, which
        

focused on new editors. I like analyzing user behavior
          

to figure out how
        

people use the tools we give them (turning templates
          

into a programming
        

language, who would've guessed?) and spotting trends
          

so we can improve
        

those tools to help people accomplish what it is
          

they're trying to do.
        

Currently I'm doing qualitative and quantitative
          

research on user
        

behavior for the foundation and its various projects,
          

and very
        

interested in finding ways of chunking all this
          

information together to
        

make pretty, compelling, informative resources so
          

people know what's
        

going on in the wikiverse and hopefully want to be a
          

part of it.
        

  From Howie
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#User_Experience_Programs>
(hfung@wikimedia.org):
          

Hello! I'm Howie and I'm a Senior Product Manager
        

at the Wikimedia Foundation. As a product person, I'd
          

like to work with
        

the community towards more data-driven decision
          

making. One area I'm
        

particularly interested in is getting a better
          

understanding of our
        

user's lifecycle with our projects -- how they come to
          

the projects, how
        

they start contributing, their experiences as a
          

contributor, why they
        

leave, and why they return. I like to use both
          

quantitative and
        

qualitative methods to obtain as complete a picture as
          

we need to guide
        

our decisions. On the quantitative side, I'm working
          

on getting better
        

web analytics for our projects. I'm also interested in
          

any data mining
        

projects along these lines (e.g., contribution
          

behavior, user lifecycle
        

patterns, etc.). On the qualitative side, I worked on
          

the "Why Editors
        

Leave Wikipedia" survey and would be interested in
          

other qualitative
        

measurements (e.g., interviews, surveys, focus
          

groups). If you're
        

interested in any of the above topics, please drop me
          

a line.
        

  From Amy
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#Public_Policy_Initiative>
(aroth@wikimedia.org):
          

Hi, I'm Amy, the Research Analyst for the Public
        

Policy Initiative
<http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative>.
          

My task
        

is to assess the project's impact on: U.S. public
          

policy article
        

quality, public policy categorization, new articles,
          

and new
        

contributors. Through the project I have focused on
          

article quality
        

assessment, and worked with the community to add a
          

quantitative value to
        

the current article assessment

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Quality_rating#Rubric>.
As a data analyst, I am interested in improving data
          

accessibility from
        

Wikipedia. In my dreams, I envision data from the
          

assessment tools that
        

exist within Wikipedia are captured in a real-time
          

database, so that we
        

can observe what is currently happening in Wikipedia
          

and how it is
        

evolving in the present, rather than having to use
          

data dumps to get
        

snapshots of the state of Wikipedia. I have experience
          

analyzing and
        

designing surveys and would like to use that
          

experience to take a more
        

in depth look at contributor demographics and
          

motivations. I am excited
        

to be a part of this huge collaborative project with a
          

mission to make
        

knowledge accessible.

  >From me, Parul Vora
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Parulvora>
(pvora@wikimedia.org):
          

Hi Everyone! I'm a researcher and designer with a
        

focus on participatory and collaborative spaces. I
          

started at the
        

Wikimedia Foundation in 2009 and moving forward have
          

interest in:
        

creating new forms of participation (beyond editing)
          

on the projects
        

that better engage a wider audience with the content
          

and each other;
        

assessing, evaluating and addressing the demographic
          

and cultural biases
        

in our projects; and exploring location, culture and
          

language as they
        

affect the development patterns of different language
          

Wikipedias in an
        

effort to identify potential for experimentation and
          

catalysis in
        

younger projects. I'm currently exploring the
          

potential effect feedback
        

systems (article ratings, expert reviews,
          

visualizations of an article's
        

history or a user's contributions) can have on the
          

engagement of
        

readers, actions of editors, and the quality of
          

content over time. I
        

like infovis, ux research, and unresearched innovation
          

and I am
        

interested in learning more about research with
          

wikipedia on motivation,
        

behavioral economic modeling and/or game theory, using
          

geolocative data,
        

mobile experiences, and profiling and trend
          

visualizations......and your
        

work too!

Let us know if you're interested in learning more,
          

participating in, or
        

contributing to our efforts. And drop any of us a line
          

if we could learn
        

from or contribute to what you've been working
          

on.......
        

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