Just a brief note on the 8% retention rate of a pilot that is not yet two months old and
has the potential for significant further refinement and improvement. This is a high
retention rate based on data I've seen on general outreach events, where the rates of
conversion to editing are very low (generally well below 5% in the analysis we've been
doing in India since January), as many people have discussed on this list and elsewhere.
The Wikipedia Education Program, where students have a rather deep introduction to
Wikipedia, has seen a retention rate of only 4% after the end of the course.[1]
[1] Report on recent research on Wikipedia Education Program in the Signpost
Best,
Barry
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
Hi Arun
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad(a)gmail.com
(mailto:arun.planemad@gmail.com)> wrote:
Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that
chaps in SF have not concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative
approach. Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful here as
we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and exploring the new world
that smartphones and 3g open out to them.
These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to
an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these
things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could
indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to
boast about.
Fair enough. And that might have been more of my point that this might not be the stage
to boast about yet, along with de-prioritize social media for actual ground-level
community work.
Second, the metrics- acquisition cost and time spent as Gautam suggested are indeed more
critical here. The metrics aren't hard to analyze, they were in the original email
itself, instead of looking at retweets, number of likes or members, look at how many
people edit, how many actually stick around. That was, what I went by at an
acquisition/conversion rate of 8%.
Third, as Ravishankar asks - if it is working why not try it? - it has been tried now,
and it's not working so well, was my point. The entire result of the exercise could be
imitated in a single workshop or mid-size meetup in 1 day. I am not saying it is not
something to keep trying, but something not focusing on as a priority. This might be
something to do in addition to regular activities, but not spend already limited resources
on. The priorities might need to be re-aligned. That was more or less, my motivation.
Regards
Theo
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