It’s always been possible to read or
edit from a mobile phone or tablet using the desktop interface, but I agree
that the development of more mobile friendly tools alters things, but still I
would argue having some “measurements” (if KPI is too biased a
term) is useful to judge whether the effort put into those tools is worth it
for the return. Does adding features alter the way Wikipedia is edited and is
it for better or worse? For example when the new mobile tool was released a little
while ago, I saw a lot of edits tagged “Mobile Edits” that were
vandalising Wikipedia. Fortunately it died down, but obviously if most of the
edits coming from mobile tools were vandalism, we might well ask if it is worth
having.
I often check my watchlist on my iPad and
“knock off” the easy ones “ok, ok, ugh vandalism revert, ok,
ok, leave that one until I’m on my laptop, ok, ok, ok” so it may be
that people just reorganise their editing around the device they are using in
which case it might change what they do from hour to hour but not over (say) a
week.
I think we have a range of metrics to pick
from in terms of quantity of activity (how many, how large, etc). What we
probably need to complement are some kinds of quality metrics. We could go with
some easy ones (how often an edit summary is left, how long is the edit
summary), how often is the activity a revert or a reverted edit, are the edits
to mainspace, talk, user, user talk, etc. But I think we do want to consider
things like the macroscopic “quality assessment” issues.
Kerry
From:
wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Sunday, 14 September 2014
3:23 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia
content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l]
What works for increasing editor engagement?
Hoi,
The problem with this approach is that as it is, the functionality for editing
on tablets and phones is not well developed at all. As a consequence the
results will not be that meaningful.
It is only recently that it became possible to edit. So realistically
there are several important factors... The development of enabling technology,
the numbers of readers from a tablet / mobile.
The personal argument of current editors that they prefer their
computer for complex stuff essentially makes the newbies on that other platform
second class citizens. The realisation that currently our technology favours
computer usage is not. The first is an argument that sounds like "do not
bother, it does not matter", the other leaves room for "we need to
work on improving the mobile/tablet experience".
Arguably, calling things a KPI may mean a bias from the start.
On 13 September 2014 14:41, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com>
wrote:
It would be very interesting to know the size of edits done on mobile
vs desktop (it would be even better if we could distinguish between phones and
tablets because of the different form factors. I appreciate that we have the
problem of definition as a person on a phone can use the desktop interface and
vice versa, so there's a matrix of device and interface potentially.
when I say "size of edit", I would really prefer to know the
size of the delta, not the difference in the size of the article as reported in
the history. My personal hypothesis is that the smaller the form factor the
smaller the edits. As much as I love my ipad, it is no substitute for my laptop
for serious editing, most edits are harder and slower on the ipad than my
laptop, and it's a pain to,do citations on a mobile device. If my hypothesis is
correct, I am not personally convinced that the loss of a desktop edit is
compensated by the gain of a mobile edit, even it results in the same total
number of edits, I think the extent to which an article is improved will be
lower on mobile (on average). Not sure how we measure that but KPIs like size
of delta and addition of citations would be something that might be
interesting. Or, with enough data, we could use the automatic assessment tool
to look for articles that change assessment (as measured by the tool) and look
at the mobile vs desktop edit counts and ratios etc.
Sent from my iPad
Hoi,
The point of research is that it provides us with understanding that
indicates one way or the other the problems we face and, how we are
trending towards success or failure.
Thanks to numbers we know the extend of the growth of our mobile
readers and editors. The trend is uncontroversial; it grows and it offsets the
readers and editors that are declining from computers. Simple research shows
that talk pages are unworkable on mobiles and tablets.
Dear Pine, do you agree that such research exists, do you agree that I
fairly summarize the data that is available ?
When you want more engagement by our public, ask yourself how can we
use our numbers and analyse what might point to things where we could / should
mobilise our community. Numbers that show clearly why it makes sense for us to
ask volunteers to volunteer. I give you one set of numbers we do not have...
The number of negative results from the searches in our Wikipedias individually.
On 11 September 2014 08:00, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hello research colleagues,
When I look at the WMF Report Card, it appears to me that the global active
editor stats and the number of new accounts being registered per month has been
relatively flat since at least 2011.
Those of you who work in EE research and analytics, I would like to ask if
there is a summary of techniques that you have found that do produce
statistically significant results in improving editor retention. I know that
some of you write tools, design projects, or pull and analyze data about
editors. It looks to me like WMF is investing significant effort in research
and tool creation, but we're not moving the needle to create the results that
we had hoped to achieve. So I'd like to ask what have we learned from all of
our time working on editor engagement about techniques and programs that do
improve the EE stats significant ways, so that we can hopefully accelerate the
implementation of programs and techniques that have demonstrated success.
I'd also like to ask what barriers you think prevent us from becoming
more effective at improving the number of users who register and the number of
active editors. For example, are users who go through GettingStarted often
being deterred by quickly being confronted by experienced editors in ways that
make the newbies want to leave? If that is a significant problem, how do you
suggest addressing this?
One of my concerns about investing further in developing Flow, analytics tools
like like WIkimetrics, and further complex editor engagement research projects,
is that the most important challenges related to editor engagement may be
problems that can only be solved through primarily interpersonal and social
means rather than the use of software tools and mass communications. I like
Wikimetrics and I use it, and I think there's an important place for analytics
and tool development in EE work, but I wonder if WMF should scale up the
emphasis on grassroots social and interpersonal efforts, particularly in the context
of the 2015+ Strategic Plan and Jimmy's speech at the 2014 Wikimania. What do
you think,and if your answer is yes, how do you think WMF can do this while
respecting the autonomy and social processes of the volunteer projects?
Thanks,
Pine
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