Hi all,
The February Research Showcase will be live-streamed next Wednesday, February 26, at 9:30 AM PT / 17:30 UTC. Find your local time here https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1740591000. The theme for this showcase is *Wikipedia Administrators*.
We invite you to watch via the YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/r88qrgi6ozA. As always, you can join the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live.
We have one longer presentation this month:
*Where have all the admins gone? Wikipedia administrator recruitment, retention, and attrition*By *Eli Asikin-Garmager, Yu-Ming Liou, Claudia Lo, Caroline Myrick (Wikimedia Foundation)* Wikipedia administrators are users with extra rights who do work beyond editing, such as settling disputes and preventing repeated vandalism. The tens of thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of administrative actions taken every month are vital to the healthy operation of any language version of Wikipedia. We will present results from a project investigating reasons administrators come, stay, and leave the role. We obtained baseline metrics of administrator in/outflow and activity, and conducted a mixed method, cross-comparative study of potential, current, and former administrators. Results show that the number of active administrators on larger Wikipedias has been declining since 2018, with some exceptions. Our presentation will unpack these findings and explore topics such as what motivates administrators to stay in the role, and what barriers may prevent new administrators from joining.
Best, Kinneret