Tim Starling wrote:
Tels wrote:
Moin,
On Monday 05 June 2006 09:54, Tim Starling wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I would be fascinated if we could figure out such statistics as
"For any given edit, what is the average length of service of the editor?" "For any given edit, what is the median length of service of the editor?" These could be measured by either time since first edit, or total number of edits or (perhaps best) some weighted average of the edit history.
Turns out we can.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Days_since_first_edit.png
Average was easiest, so I did that as a first try. It shows an initial upward trend, stabilising in early 2005 at about 300 days. How's that?
Cool :)
Does that mean after about 300 days after account creation, people give up at editing?
No, the average time before people abandon their accounts would be much shorter. Many accounts have never edited at all, I imagine there are also many accounts with only 1 or 2 edits. An average over accounts would be skewed towards this end. This is an average over edits, so it is skewed towards very active editors.
One interpretation would be to assume that most edits are performed by a core group of very active editors. Then you could say that the average age of a very active editor is about 300 days. You have to phrase it carefully, because there are two factors which limit this figure: attrition and growth. Editors getting tired and leaving will cause it to be reduced, as will an influx of new editors.
What could also be interesting is the edit patterns which would graph the number of edits on each day of their editing life. How gradually does it tail off?
Also, to what extent do people effectively stop editing on en:wikipedia but still remain active on other projects?
Ec