Hello list, Some time ago I was reading a blog created by a group of editors of the Italian Wikipedia for the 10 years birthday of Wikipedia. [1] There was an interesting series of posts written by some prominent members of the community recalling their first experience with Wikipedia. What struck me from these accounts is that several of them wrote they had spent some time contributing anonymously before registering a user account.
I was wondering if there are any figures on how systematic the phenomenon might be. Has anybody ever looked into this kind of questions (not necessarily in the context of Wikipedia)?
Pointers to the literature would be very much appreciated :-)
Cheers,
[1]: http://dieciannidisapere.it/ (in Italian)
Dear colleague,
Maybe I don't totally unterstand what you are surprised about. :-) It happens a lot that people edit Wikipedia without being logged-in, indeed.
I don't know how to find out how many people first edit unregistered and later register, but I believe that it is quite common. This is btw not very good because editing without registration has a lot of negative side effects.
I wouldn't speak about "anonymous users" because that sounds as if you are no longer anonymous after registration. Many people believe that registration means that they have to reveal their identity and so they don't register.
Some statistics: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#anonymous
Kind regards Ziko van Dijk
2011/5/17 Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia ciampagg@usi.ch:
Hello list, Some time ago I was reading a blog created by a group of editors of the Italian Wikipedia for the 10 years birthday of Wikipedia. [1] There was an interesting series of posts written by some prominent members of the community recalling their first experience with Wikipedia. What struck me from these accounts is that several of them wrote they had spent some time contributing anonymously before registering a user account.
I was wondering if there are any figures on how systematic the phenomenon might be. Has anybody ever looked into this kind of questions (not necessarily in the context of Wikipedia)?
Pointers to the literature would be very much appreciated :-)
Cheers,
-- Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
Ph.D. Candidate Faculty of Informatics University of Lugano Web: http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/ciampaglia/
Bertastraße 36 * 8003 Zürich * Switzerland
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Dear Giovanni -
As far as I know from formal and informal interviews with Wikipedia contributors, many people (I don't know the percentage) edit initially without creating an account, and/or they are not very strict about logging in when they edit initially (where "initially" can be first 5 edits or first 50, within the same month or spaced over a couple of years, I don't know for sure).
As people become more involved in editing and more concerned with earning a reputation, or with being able to retrieve their own edits (and generally understand the benefits of using their user accounts), they become more aware of the importance of being logged in. However there still remain instances where people deliberately choose not to be logged in, such as when they are editing an article (or make an edit) they don't want to tracked back to their account. An example of this that I encountered would be copyediting articles that deal with x-rated movies /movie stars (self-reported by interviewees).
Hope this helps.
Best- Andreea Gorbatai
-----Original Message----- From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ziko van Dijk Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 1:30 PM To: ciampagg@usi.ch; Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Anonymous users
Dear colleague,
Maybe I don't totally unterstand what you are surprised about. :-) It happens a lot that people edit Wikipedia without being logged-in, indeed.
I don't know how to find out how many people first edit unregistered and later register, but I believe that it is quite common. This is btw not very good because editing without registration has a lot of negative side effects.
I wouldn't speak about "anonymous users" because that sounds as if you are no longer anonymous after registration. Many people believe that registration means that they have to reveal their identity and so they don't register.
Some statistics: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#anonymous
Kind regards Ziko van Dijk
2011/5/17 Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia ciampagg@usi.ch:
Hello list, Some time ago I was reading a blog created by a group of editors of the Italian Wikipedia for the 10 years birthday of Wikipedia. [1] There was an interesting series of posts written by some prominent members of the community recalling their first experience with Wikipedia. What struck me from these accounts is that several of them wrote they had spent some time contributing anonymously before registering a user account.
I was wondering if there are any figures on how systematic the phenomenon might be. Has anybody ever looked into this kind of questions (not necessarily in the context of Wikipedia)?
Pointers to the literature would be very much appreciated :-)
Cheers,
-- Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
Ph.D. Candidate Faculty of Informatics University of Lugano Web: http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/ciampaglia/
Bertastraße 36 * 8003 Zürich * Switzerland
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Thank you both for you replies, Andreea and Ziko.
I am wondering if this initial period of anonymity affects long-term participation positively or not. My first guess would be that those users who register after a period of anonymous contribution are more likely to stay in the community for long periods of time, because during that time they had the chance to acclimatize to the community.
Has anybody ever looked into this question?
cheers
G
On 17/05/2011 20:40, Gorbatai, Andreea wrote:
Dear Giovanni -
As far as I know from formal and informal interviews with Wikipedia contributors, many people (I don't know the percentage) edit initially without creating an account, and/or they are not very strict about logging in when they edit initially (where "initially" can be first 5 edits or first 50, within the same month or spaced over a couple of years, I don't know for sure).
As people become more involved in editing and more concerned with earning a reputation, or with being able to retrieve their own edits (and generally understand the benefits of using their user accounts), they become more aware of the importance of being logged in. However there still remain instances where people deliberately choose not to be logged in, such as when they are editing an article (or make an edit) they don't want to tracked back to their account. An example of this that I encountered would be copyediting articles that deal with x-rated movies /movie stars (self-reported by interviewees).
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org