My message is inspired by discussion in this thread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Loss_of...) on Englush Wikipedia. Whereas the thread itself is not relevant to this list, and the points get re-iterated on a regular basis, there were statements made there which contain quantitative estimates (for instance that 90% established users who leave do it because they get a new job or have their external life changed in some other way, and not because of harassment etc). Most probably these numbers are not really justified, but then I wanted to know what real numbers are. I am an Rcom member, but I can not recollect such research being accomplished (I might be wrong of course). I could not find data easily either (I spent half an hour because I remembered we had a Community Health initiative group which somehow evolved into the Movement Roles, but the Movement Roles pages on Meta do not talk about community health at all, and I could not even find an appropriate page to ask the question).
After this long introduction, does somebody know / can point out the answers to the questions:
1. What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the one with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
2. What are the main reasons why these editors stop editing? Is this correct, for instance, that external reasons are much more important than internal (on-wiki troubles and wiki-related harassment) reasons? The same for say those above 10000 edits?
Thanks in advance Cheers Yaroslav
Yaroslav -
You'll probably find background for some of this on the strategy wiki - that's the community health group that you're thinking about. :-)
This is a survey in particular that might interest you: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Community_Health/Former_contri...
Also, Zack has some statistics from the Summer of Research, I think, on the other questions you ask. You might write him.
pb ___________________ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe@wikimedia.org
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ruwrote:
My message is inspired by discussion in this thread ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Administrators%27_** noticeboard#Loss_of_more_and_**more_and_more_established_** editors_and_administratorshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Loss_of_more_and_more_and_more_established_editors_and_administrators) on Englush Wikipedia. Whereas the thread itself is not relevant to this list, and the points get re-iterated on a regular basis, there were statements made there which contain quantitative estimates (for instance that 90% established users who leave do it because they get a new job or have their external life changed in some other way, and not because of harassment etc). Most probably these numbers are not really justified, but then I wanted to know what real numbers are. I am an Rcom member, but I can not recollect such research being accomplished (I might be wrong of course). I could not find data easily either (I spent half an hour because I remembered we had a Community Health initiative group which somehow evolved into the Movement Roles, but the Movement Roles pages on Meta do not talk about community health at all, and I could not even find an appropriate page to ask the question).
After this long introduction, does somebody know / can point out the answers to the questions:
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the
one with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
- What are the main reasons why these editors stop editing? Is this
correct, for instance, that external reasons are much more important than internal (on-wiki troubles and wiki-related harassment) reasons? The same for say those above 10000 edits?
Thanks in advance Cheers Yaroslav
______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Perhaps this page, with results, might be helpful as well: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Community_Health/Survey
Risker
On 18 April 2012 17:22, Philippe Beaudette philippe@wikimedia.org wrote:
Yaroslav -
You'll probably find background for some of this on the strategy wiki - that's the community health group that you're thinking about. :-)
This is a survey in particular that might interest you:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Community_Health/Former_contri...
Also, Zack has some statistics from the Summer of Research, I think, on the other questions you ask. You might write him.
pb ___________________ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
415-839-6885, x 6643
philippe@wikimedia.org
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod@mccme.ru
wrote:
My message is inspired by discussion in this thread ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Administrators%27_** noticeboard#Loss_of_more_and_**more_and_more_established_** editors_and_administrators<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Loss_of...
) on Englush Wikipedia. Whereas the thread itself is not relevant to this list, and the points get re-iterated on a regular basis, there were statements made there which contain quantitative estimates (for instance that 90% established users who leave do it because they get a new job or have their external life changed in some other way, and not because of harassment etc). Most probably these numbers are not really justified,
but
then I wanted to know what real numbers are. I am an Rcom member, but I
can
not recollect such research being accomplished (I might be wrong of course). I could not find data easily either (I spent half an hour
because
I remembered we had a Community Health initiative group which somehow evolved into the Movement Roles, but the Movement Roles pages on Meta do not talk about community health at all, and I could not even find an appropriate page to ask the question).
After this long introduction, does somebody know / can point out the answers to the questions:
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the
one with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years,
but
I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it
depend
on the number of contributions?
- What are the main reasons why these editors stop editing? Is this
correct, for instance, that external reasons are much more important than internal (on-wiki troubles and wiki-related harassment) reasons? The same for say those above 10000 edits?
Thanks in advance Cheers Yaroslav
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l%3E
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On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote: <snip>
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the one
with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
For enwiki, using data from last August:
28243 users have at least 1000 edits (all namespaces).
Of these, 9898 had not edited in the six months before the end of the data set.
So about 65% of the major editors are still active, at least occasionally.
The mean wiki-lifetime for the 28243 major users was 49.9 months.
For the 9898 users who were not recently active, the mean wiki-lifetime was 35.6 months.
Further, there are 4685 users with at least 10000 edits, and of these, all but 914 were still active in the last 6 months of the data set. So 80% of the editors at the very high end are still active (at least occasionally). The mean wiki-lifetime on the total group is 60.5 months, and the departed group is 42.6 months.
Incidentally, the mean account age of individuals editing article space is now over 3 years for enwiki. A lot of the work is being by the relative old-timers. By the same token though, people who have ever made it to 1000 edits are more likely than not to still be active today.
-Robert Rohde
PS. This story was triggered by Fastily's retirement. He has 46000 edits on enwiki, and only about 620 editors have reached that plateau. Of these, 90% are still active. So such retirements are relatively rare. Personally, I hope he decides to come back after taking some time to relax and recharge. It seems to be the case that many such declared retirements aren't really permanent.
-Robert Rohde
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
<snip>
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the one
with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
For enwiki, using data from last August:
28243 users have at least 1000 edits (all namespaces).
Of these, 9898 had not edited in the six months before the end of the data set.
So about 65% of the major editors are still active, at least occasionally.
The mean wiki-lifetime for the 28243 major users was 49.9 months.
For the 9898 users who were not recently active, the mean wiki-lifetime was 35.6 months.
Further, there are 4685 users with at least 10000 edits, and of these, all but 914 were still active in the last 6 months of the data set. So 80% of the editors at the very high end are still active (at least occasionally). The mean wiki-lifetime on the total group is 60.5 months, and the departed group is 42.6 months.
Incidentally, the mean account age of individuals editing article space is now over 3 years for enwiki. A lot of the work is being by the relative old-timers. By the same token though, people who have ever made it to 1000 edits are more likely than not to still be active today.
-Robert Rohde
Fastily is still active on Commons.
h
Am 19.04.2012 01:40, schrieb Robert Rohde:
PS. This story was triggered by Fastily's retirement. He has 46000 edits on enwiki, and only about 620 editors have reached that plateau. Of these, 90% are still active. So such retirements are relatively rare. Personally, I hope he decides to come back after taking some time to relax and recharge. It seems to be the case that many such declared retirements aren't really permanent.
-Robert Rohde
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
<snip>
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the one
with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
For enwiki, using data from last August:
28243 users have at least 1000 edits (all namespaces).
Of these, 9898 had not edited in the six months before the end of the data set.
So about 65% of the major editors are still active, at least occasionally.
The mean wiki-lifetime for the 28243 major users was 49.9 months.
For the 9898 users who were not recently active, the mean wiki-lifetime was 35.6 months.
Further, there are 4685 users with at least 10000 edits, and of these, all but 914 were still active in the last 6 months of the data set. So 80% of the editors at the very high end are still active (at least occasionally). The mean wiki-lifetime on the total group is 60.5 months, and the departed group is 42.6 months.
Incidentally, the mean account age of individuals editing article space is now over 3 years for enwiki. A lot of the work is being by the relative old-timers. By the same token though, people who have ever made it to 1000 edits are more likely than not to still be active today.
-Robert Rohde
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This thread is a good candidate for wiki-research-l. Forwarding...
2012/4/18 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
My message is inspired by discussion in this thread ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Administrators%27_** noticeboard#Loss_of_more_and_**more_and_more_established_** editors_and_administratorshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Loss_of_more_and_more_and_more_established_editors_and_administrators) on Englush Wikipedia. Whereas the thread itself is not relevant to this list, and the points get re-iterated on a regular basis, there were statements made there which contain quantitative estimates (for instance that 90% established users who leave do it because they get a new job or have their external life changed in some other way, and not because of harassment etc). Most probably these numbers are not really justified, but then I wanted to know what real numbers are. I am an Rcom member, but I can not recollect such research being accomplished (I might be wrong of course). I could not find data easily either (I spent half an hour because I remembered we had a Community Health initiative group which somehow evolved into the Movement Roles, but the Movement Roles pages on Meta do not talk about community health at all, and I could not even find an appropriate page to ask the question).
After this long introduction, does somebody know / can point out the answers to the questions:
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance the
one with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
- What are the main reasons why these editors stop editing? Is this
correct, for instance, that external reasons are much more important than internal (on-wiki troubles and wiki-related harassment) reasons? The same for say those above 10000 edits?
Thanks in advance Cheers Yaroslav
______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Thank you all for the replies, I need some time to process this information.
Cheers Yaroslav
- What is the average lifetime of a Wikipedia editor (for instance
the one with at leat 1000 contributions)? I recollect smth about two years, but I am pretty sure I have never seen any research on this. How does it depend on the number of contributions?
- What are the main reasons why these editors stop editing? Is this
correct, for instance, that external reasons are much more important than internal (on-wiki troubles and wiki-related harassment) reasons? The same for say those above 10000 edits?
Thanks in advance Cheers Yaroslav
______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
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