I find this paper quite an interesting read:
A Latent Space Analysis of Editor Lifecycles in Wikipedia
Xiangju Qin,
Derek Greene,
Pádraig Cunningham
arXiv:1407.7736v1
In it, the authors suggest that Wikipedians who are focused tend to stay longer editing the encyclopedia and they’ve actually shown that understanding patterns of change in user behavior can be of practical importance for community management and maintenance.