A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focusWe now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
We aren't out of the woods yet as other metrics are still declining, for example both new accounts and editors making 5 or more saves are both down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_foc...
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors are up", - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or even - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts to fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours,
Greetings James. Your response here seems unhelpful and mind I suggest, snarky. You are essentially arguing over semantics. You object to the usage of a term - "core editing community", then suggest his titles is faulty and misleading while suggesting almost antithetical alternatives. You end by questioning his logic, suggesting that might just be vandalism being reverted, while ending it all with what you plan on doing with this next?
It certainly seems like more is going on here behind the scenes than what one can infer from reading. The article mentions Erik Zachte, who I would always trust on these numbers, that "The growth seems real to me". It also mentions lila's different leadership style that may be bearing fruit.
Please have another read at your response. I read a nice email earlier from Lila on this list[1], about distracting with polarizing rhetorics. And to bring up issues, in good faith and with care for each other. I hope staff members, especially senior members, along with other readers, take note.
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 9:22 PM, James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
That would be just an opinion, and that too, over terminology not the data. Interesting data though, you are correct.
I don't believe that term is offensive, other opinions may differ. However, what I don't know if it's the new terminology WMF wants to use? You can make some delineation here about this being your own personal opinion, you are using your staff email and your title in signature.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors
are up",
- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
even
- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts to fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
None of the part above, or those alternative titles are helpful. Perhaps you want to look in to this issue and work with WereSpielChequers.
Thanks Theo
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-September/079054.html
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different cohorts of editors.
Pine
On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_foc...
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
English
Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
are
up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but
meta-editors
are up",
- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
even
- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
attempts to
fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours,
James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 10 September 2015 at 10:56, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like that to WSC's attempt to share good news.
Then in my e-mail I have failed entirely, and I apologise.
My point is that we should all be very cautious in mis-reading a single number (even sustained over a trend) as being "nice" when in fact we have no reason to suspect that it is necessarily "good news". It is not "good news" until we know that it is positive and can explain why.
Shouting from the rooftops about events as "good news" without the solid evidence to back such a claim up risks damaging all the community efforts working to find and fix the issues at play. If we are going to improve the situation, we have a duty to ourselves to be honest and realistic about what we know, and what things we find tell us. We need to hold ourselves to the highest standards of truth, and not rush in with the first interpretation that comes to mind.
Perhaps you can also think of
positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
WSC has worked hard to come up with positive reasons. :-)
I felt we needed to be more balanced, nuanced and realistic viewpoint. To use a metaphor, possibly this datapoint is a candle of light in a storm of darkness, but it might be the transformer exploding in sparks just as much as it might be a the end of the storm.
However, since you asked, some positive narratives that might also or instead be true:
- Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so people can do more edits in the same amount of time. - Increased community quality criteria lead to many very-active editors taking up the baton and correcting dozens of articles each. - Simpler, more understandable community norms and processes mean some feel driven to improving their areas of the. - Cleaner, clearer designs for tools to make mass-edits more accessible and appealing to more users. - Decreased competition increases the reader demand and so eyes in some environments previously lacking, pushing more people over the line from "active" into "very active".
However, all these narratives are merely speculation.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an
editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different cohorts of editors.
I too look forward to knowing more about the world, and measuring value, effort and types of edits as Aaron is trying to do would be a fantastic improvement in understanding the picture better, yes. This may take some time though, and Aaron and his team needs our support, not just heaping of expectations on him and their work. :-)
Let's not count chickens before they've hatched.
J.
For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually around mid-to-late 2013. The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per month), but has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 edits per month).
This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement.
In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition. The cohort of editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014. If you choose any edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account registered was 2006. That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade. (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, though not as huge as 2006.) If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will finally lose their crown in 2015. The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015. It will also be the second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased their total edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year accounts.
I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic. I'm not sure we should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic collapse less likely.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different cohorts of editors.
Pine
On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_foc...
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
English
Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace
than
for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
are
up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term
is
"very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but
meta-editors
are up",
- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
even
- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
attempts to
fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours,
James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
James,
A) Should we value editors with many edits more than editors with just a few? Your counter-example (editors who write a long article in one go offline) is canonical, and probably uncontested, so you're stating the obvious, no need to use a loaded term like 'offensive', and to spell it out as if WereSpielChequers wouldn't know this, or would disagree. I use the term 'core community' loosely myself from time to time, knowing full well that any precise definition would be incomplete. Incidentally I think 'very active editors' is a misnomer (which I started) for the same reason. People can be very active editors offline per the same example. [1]
B) Agreed, we should be careful to interpret a trend (-change) in a very basic metric, or what that metric actually tells us anyway. But again I think you're stating the obvious. The only thing that surprises me is your timing: I never heard you utter these nuances so much when veteran foundation staff and other core community members overemphasized (in my opinion) countering editor decline as a primary target (I tried to nuance this all along as much as I could).
So yes, 'editor count' is overly simplistic, and so is 'inflation rate', 'gross domestic product', 'population count'. All of these are overly simplistic, and without further breakdown don't tell us much. Yet these simplistic metrics survive, because everyone understands them, and much less people want to know the underlying complexity (especially decision makers), and importantly: they are collected consistently for a long time (more refined numbers suffer more easily from definition creep, or being en vogue temporarily). The most refined metrics are often from one-off studies, valuable but not gaining enough momentum for repeated collection.
I need to explain my statement which was re-quoted in this thread: "The growth seems real to me". I first and formost meant "To my best knowledge the numbers are reliable". I expect no bug or other artefact (WereSpielChequers asked me about that specifically). The code is time-tested and stable. There is always a change that a hidden bug surfaces in a changing environment, but I see no sign for that. So at face value the growth is real then, more editors pass the threshold. But giving meaning to that figure is a process of never ending dialectic.
Lastly, a more philosophical comment: shouldn't we rejoice if a partially understood metric seems to give ground for optimism. IMO we should, as joy (and fear) provide the incentive to dig deeper. Our news agencies make a living of incomplete news. Any scientific knowledge is temporary at best, until falsified. I rejoiced when I read that traffic accidents decreased in last 5 years.Then someone countered that road traffic declined overall due to dip in economy, so the effect may be temporary and not systemic, so I lost some joy. But I gained from the exchange.
Cheers, Erik
--
Notes/details:
[1] I would be interested to see how often this happens: writing an article offline in one go. My hunch is less and less, as more and more people get speedier access, and site submits happen faster, thus reducing 'involutarily offline editing'.
[2] Specifics on the examples you gave:
I find some of your examples in your first mail a bit far-fetched. Very active editors reversing each other ad infinitum, hmm, when was the last time you actually saw this? And (spam)bots are excluded from out editor counts anyway as much as feasible. In general edits on wp:en grew in 2015, while reverts stayed more or less the same: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotEditsEN.png
In your second response you name some positive reasons why our editor count could be growing, and they seem mostly plausible to me. But here is also room for nuance: 'Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so people can do more edits in the same amount of time.' would be high on my list to investigate, and maybe even be reason to question the gain. The uptick in January conincided with a major site performance boost (faster PHP). I can imagine people who edit heavy articles like 'Obama' (heavy in terms of links etc, with iirc almost a minute of submit time), would edit online in one go without intermittent submits, and now these same people went back to precautionary intermittent submits, thus accomplishing same amount of work in more edits, in which case our gain would be mostly our editors' peace of mind. Building on this: perhaps part of the decline in previous years came from slowing submits?
(disclaimer : all of the above is only my personal opinion)
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 21:00 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community
For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually around mid-to-late 2013. The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per month), but has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 edits per month).
This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement.
In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition. The cohort of editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014. If you choose any edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account registered was 2006. That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade. (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, though not as huge as 2006.) If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will finally lose their crown in 2015. The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015. It will also be the second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased their total edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year accounts.
I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic. I'm not sure we should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic collapse less likely.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different cohorts of editors.
Pine
On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/ In_focus
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
English
Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace
than
for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
are
up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term
is
"very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but
meta-editors
are up",
- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
even
- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
attempts to
fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours,
James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
In svwp we have noticed exactly the same trends, over the same timeframe. But as we are small we know what accounts etc are behind the number etc.
As I wrote about a year ago, we have found that when an editor has made more the 38000 edits (the corresponding number for enwp seems to be around 80000) he/she is stuck and will not leave. In svwp this is only around 45 and these growth with one or two a year (multiply with 10-20 to get corresponding for enwp). And it is from this group that the increas in +100 edits
And while these "never" leaves those with fewer leaves earlier then a few years ago (does not necessary relate to community climate, there are also fewer "holes" to fill in nowadays).
This "explanation" also corresponds well with the mean "wikipadia age" for contributes growth with half a yea r every year for every year that passes.
Anders
Den 2015-09-11 kl. 04:39, skrev Erik Zachte:
James,
A) Should we value editors with many edits more than editors with just a few? Your counter-example (editors who write a long article in one go offline) is canonical, and probably uncontested, so you're stating the obvious, no need to use a loaded term like 'offensive', and to spell it out as if WereSpielChequers wouldn't know this, or would disagree. I use the term 'core community' loosely myself from time to time, knowing full well that any precise definition would be incomplete. Incidentally I think 'very active editors' is a misnomer (which I started) for the same reason. People can be very active editors offline per the same example. [1]
B) Agreed, we should be careful to interpret a trend (-change) in a very basic metric, or what that metric actually tells us anyway. But again I think you're stating the obvious. The only thing that surprises me is your timing: I never heard you utter these nuances so much when veteran foundation staff and other core community members overemphasized (in my opinion) countering editor decline as a primary target (I tried to nuance this all along as much as I could).
So yes, 'editor count' is overly simplistic, and so is 'inflation rate', 'gross domestic product', 'population count'. All of these are overly simplistic, and without further breakdown don't tell us much. Yet these simplistic metrics survive, because everyone understands them, and much less people want to know the underlying complexity (especially decision makers), and importantly: they are collected consistently for a long time (more refined numbers suffer more easily from definition creep, or being en vogue temporarily). The most refined metrics are often from one-off studies, valuable but not gaining enough momentum for repeated collection.
I need to explain my statement which was re-quoted in this thread: "The growth seems real to me". I first and formost meant "To my best knowledge the numbers are reliable". I expect no bug or other artefact (WereSpielChequers asked me about that specifically). The code is time-tested and stable. There is always a change that a hidden bug surfaces in a changing environment, but I see no sign for that. So at face value the growth is real then, more editors pass the threshold. But giving meaning to that figure is a process of never ending dialectic.
Lastly, a more philosophical comment: shouldn't we rejoice if a partially understood metric seems to give ground for optimism. IMO we should, as joy (and fear) provide the incentive to dig deeper. Our news agencies make a living of incomplete news. Any scientific knowledge is temporary at best, until falsified. I rejoiced when I read that traffic accidents decreased in last 5 years.Then someone countered that road traffic declined overall due to dip in economy, so the effect may be temporary and not systemic, so I lost some joy. But I gained from the exchange.
Cheers, Erik
--
Notes/details:
[1] I would be interested to see how often this happens: writing an article offline in one go. My hunch is less and less, as more and more people get speedier access, and site submits happen faster, thus reducing 'involutarily offline editing'.
[2] Specifics on the examples you gave:
I find some of your examples in your first mail a bit far-fetched. Very active editors reversing each other ad infinitum, hmm, when was the last time you actually saw this? And (spam)bots are excluded from out editor counts anyway as much as feasible. In general edits on wp:en grew in 2015, while reverts stayed more or less the same: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotEditsEN.png
In your second response you name some positive reasons why our editor count could be growing, and they seem mostly plausible to me. But here is also room for nuance: 'Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so people can do more edits in the same amount of time.' would be high on my list to investigate, and maybe even be reason to question the gain. The uptick in January conincided with a major site performance boost (faster PHP). I can imagine people who edit heavy articles like 'Obama' (heavy in terms of links etc, with iirc almost a minute of submit time), would edit online in one go without intermittent submits, and now these same people went back to precautionary intermittent submits, thus accomplishing same amount of work in more edits, in which case our gain would be mostly our editors' peace of mind. Building on this: perhaps part of the decline in previous years came from slowing submits?
(disclaimer : all of the above is only my personal opinion)
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 21:00 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community
For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually around mid-to-late 2013. The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per month), but has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 edits per month).
This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement.
In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition. The cohort of editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014. If you choose any edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account registered was 2006. That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade. (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, though not as huge as 2006.) If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will finally lose their crown in 2015. The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015. It will also be the second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased their total edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year accounts.
I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic. I'm not sure we should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic collapse less likely.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
James,
Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of highly active editors.
I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different cohorts of editors.
Pine
On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/ In_focus
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
English
Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace
than
for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
are
up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term
is
"very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
[Snip]
editors making 5 or more saves
[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline butmeta-editors
are up", - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or even - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperateattempts to
fix things"?But it's nice to have one metric be positive. I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours,
James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
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Do you have any more useful or meaningful metrics?
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Forrester Sent: Thursday, 10 September 2015 5:52 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community
On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/ In_focus
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
?Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.?
Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
?[Snip]?
editors making 5 or more saves
?[is] down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
?So, actually, your title? is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could say:
- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors are up", - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or even - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts to fix things"?
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
?I'm not sure it is.? What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
Yours, -- James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
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Hi!
In economics there is a business cycle with ups and downs. This is a naturally process that also exists in the number of editors. If there would be a trend that only exists in more and more users editing, just like the dot-com buble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble, a growth that is too large collapses at some point as the existing community can't handle it.
In multiple years I have given workshops and edit-a-thons where new editors learned how to edit. They all are very interested in continuing with it. But for some reason they actually did not. Asking why received in a very simple answer: on Wikipedia it lacks of an environment where new users can actually work together in an easy way, where they can form a group and easily follow the group edits, having a joint project, etc. They experience that after an workshop, they walk into a large wiki where it is not easy to start from blank, they experience the doorstep as too high. As long as this issue, noticed with many many groups of new editors, is not solved, the core problem is not solved.
And beyond that issue, there are also other issues we can think of, including how newcomers are treated, or the difficulties of online communication, and more. There is a lot of work to do before I think we can be really positive about the number of users. Not to be negative, but to be realistic. As movement we should work together on getting a more social environment.
Greetings, Romaine
2015-09-10 16:21 GMT+02:00 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com:
A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_foc...
We
now have the August figures https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm, and August has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
We aren't out of the woods yet as other metrics are still declining, for example both new accounts and editors making 5 or more saves are both down across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
Regards
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