On 30 May 2014 17:10, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote: ...
Anecdotally I know some people I've trained have returned to editing after a long period (a year or more), or have continued editing occasionally, as IP editors. Others may not have edited again, but act as advocates, telling other people that they can edit (and this includes librarians and archivists I've trained, who speak to potential new editors every working day). Even if all we achieve is to get someone to stop decrying Wikipedia as unreliable, or to donate in our yearly drives, that's something.
It would be quite easy to create a report tracking user accounts created at editathons (even if only a small proportion were noted) and seeing what patterns emerge. After spending a few years watching long term accounts on Commons, many accounts vanish for extended periods, such as Andy's example of a year, and then return with fresh enthusiasm. Some editors return and just start a new account, so they look like they vanished forever.
My past experience was an "editor creation rate" of around 20% of editors. However this was only looking at the first month after creating an account for an editathon, and I would expect the estimate of a 5% long term retention is probably right. This is something I would expect the UK Chapter to address in its metrics programme in order to justify more funding.
Anecdotally again, many new editors get spooked after having their first few warning notices (*especially* GLAM users getting notices or quizzed about Conflict of Interest), or an bad experience with having a couple of hours work on an article getting reverted for reasons that they have difficulty understanding or by a "less than helpful" highly experienced Wikipedia editor. On Commons there are similar patterns, and I see some of this on OTRS with very frustrated new users that started helping with interesting uploads but ran into (from their point of view) bureaucratic processes for copyright verification, or hard to understand challenges to their statements that they hold the copyright. Of course, sometimes they do not, and that can be really hard to explain how cautious Commons and Wikipedia can be with "no copyright known" or jointly authored material.
BTW, I am not too disillusioned by 5%. A factor to consider is how we "qualify" attendees for a training event rather than haphazardly just doing more events and hoping that the (WMF desired) outcome of more long term Wikipedia editors might go up. We should also consider how to run training events not targeted at creating editors but other ways of using content or cooperation with non-core projects - like WikiTravel, Open Street Map or WikiQueer, which may make available useful public knowledge that would struggle to meet the ever challenging notability or COI strictures of the English Wikipedia. At the end of the day, the shared vision here is to preserve and provide access to all human knowledge, whatever the technology is to achieve it.
Fae