Re: [Wiki-research-l] Editors: research on transitions, learning over time, leaving

left yet". With the benefit of hindsight (a wonderful thing), that might be a bad way to have asked the question. A better way might have been to ask why they are no longer active and what circumstances/change would be likely to make them active again. What we really want to know if the reasons for inactivity are internal/external to Wikipedia and whether the conditions for re-engagement are internal/external to Wikipedia. And for the internal ones, we'd like to know more specifically what they are. "I haven't left yet, but as soon as my new baby has started school, I might have the time for Wikipedia again" (i.e. the cause of inactivity and return to activity is outside of Wikipedia's control). There is not a lot Wikipedia can do about such a contributors. "I left because I was sick and tired of the unpleasant way people behave, but I enjoyed contributing otherwise and would do so again if the culture was a lot nicer" is something that WP has some control over but not something you can fix in an afternoon. "I left because I just found it too hard, I kept forgetting when to use [[ and when to use {{ and I never figured out that <ref> thing" is someone that we could potentially re-engage on the spot by saying "hey, try the Visual Editor!". Or maybe "I haven't left yet" is more literally true than we think. It is possible that the person is still active on Wikipedia but under a different user name or as an IP so they just appear to have become inactive under their former user name. If a person has had some unpleasant experiences on Wikipedia and that is why they became inactive, there are a lot of good reasons why they might not like to return under the same user name. Wikipedia has an infinitely long memory for things like bans and blocks and watch lists last forever. If you got yourself in trouble previously but you want to start afresh, you probably want to create a new account. If you had bad experiences with some other user who was regularly unpleasant to you, you would want a new account as they can watch your User page and Talk page forever to detect if you ever return. *Changing* your user name doesn't solve that problem, creating a new account does. And of course you may just have forgotten your username or your password and created a new account. Personally, I am inclined to think that the "I haven't left yet" editors (who aren't active under another user name) are probably effectively lost to us. Some other interest has almost certainly chewed up their spare time during their absence from Wikipedia. There's a big gap between "I'm not saying No" to "I'm saying Yes". The other issue is that even if the desired circumstances for re-engagement are in place, you still need some kind of way to communicate this fact to the "lost users". Given that providing an email address isn’t mandatory on creating an account, we can only communicate with those who did provide an email address and hope it is still an active one. For example, perhaps we should be emailing all the "lost users" (where we can) periodically and saying "Hey, try that Visual Editor" or "get involved with #1Lib1Ref" or mentioning some other positive thing that might convince them to give it another go. It's been said (and I really don't know if it's true) that people respond better to being needed than to being wanted. Maybe we can use that in Project Boomerang. Find an article that the lost user has made a lot of contributions to but which hasn't grown much since (ignoring all the re-categorisations, MoS enforcements, reverted vandalisms, and other edits that don't greatly enhance the information content of an article) and tell them that article XYZ needs them to come and keep it up-to-date. In sales, they often say it is 10x the effort to get a new customer than to retain an existing one. Maybe instead of putting effort into onboarding new users (who we have to put through a massive learning curve very fast or watch them die the slow death of many reverts and AfC rejections), we should put more effort into re-engaging lost users (there's less of a learning curve to bring them back). Kerry _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l