[Foundation-l] Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:
>>> They do not use any mailing lists at all as far as I know. At least I am
>>> not aware of existence of any mailing lists for ru.wp
>>
>> First, as you (Yaroslav) is active here, I would like to know what
>> Russian Wikipedians are using for communication. Just wiki? Some other
>> ways of communication? Wikipedia in Russian is not a small project, as
>> well as it is growing -- which demands some level of systematic
>> coordination. I think that the answer on this question may be very
>> significant at least in understanding some part of lists traffic
>> decrease.
>>
>
> The main channel of communication is wiki: basically, the village pump
> which is structured as a number of pages, for instance for instance,
> general, news, rules, technical issues and such. So far it worked.
> Important issues are branched out as separate rfc's.
>
> Some of the Wikipedians (not me) are full-time present on irc channel.
>
> A creation of a mailing list for sysops only was recently proposed but was
> eventually rejected.
>
> There is of course personal communication, and there are even some
> Wikipedians (not me again) who insist that most of the issues should be
> discussed privately.
>
> The Russian chapter is in the creation stage and does not have its own
> communication channel as far as I know.
>
> I am not aware of any other signifgicant communication channels (I
> recollect there is a collective blog which is half-dead and there is a
> decision of arbitration committee that this blog is not a part of the
> community), may be there are some more I do not know of, but it is
> unlikely. There are information channels of course, for instance, similar
> to wikizine. but they do not involve any discussions and are not
> widespread (at least now).
>
> Some of the prominent ru.wp editors are subscribed to this list, I assume
> they will correct me if they have a different perspective.

Hm. At the first sight, I haven't found anything interesting. But, I
took a look to statistics (stats.wikimedia.org) and I realized that
one of the possible answers is laying in ru.wp community.

First, I didn't see anything special; just different communication
channels. But, it may be the part of the answer, too. Using wiki as a
communication channel is more productive.

Then I went to stats (statistics are from May 2008) and compared the
data for the next Wikipedias:
- (English and German are not so relevant because statistics are old.)
- I took French and Italian as "the ordinary cases" -- as their lists
show decline.
- Russian and Japanese are "not so ordinary cases".
- I took Serbian, too, to compare data with my knowledge.

So, before I started, I had supposed the next:
- French [1] and Italian [2] should show signs of stagnation and
decline (according to the data from the lists).
- Serbian [3] should show signs of stagnation and decline (according
to my knowledge: it is in the similar situation as other "ordinary
cases").
- Russian [4] should show signs of stagnation: it started to raise,
but it should be around the peak. So, if not decline, stagnation is
expected.
- Japanese [5] should show signs of low raising (according to the data
from the list).

I was just partially right:
- I was right for French, Italian and Serbian Wikipedias.
- Russian doesn't show signs of stagnation, but signs of linear raise
(not exponential, like it was during the first years of Wikipedia, of
course).
- Japanese is in stronger decline than French, Italian and Serbian.

Before the particular analysis, just to explain what which behavior
means to us in the case of new users:
- Linear growth: (a) in the sense of project growth: exponential
growth (n^m); (b) in the sense of long term sustainability: linear
growth.
- Stagnation: (a) in the sense of project growth: linear growth (n*m);
(b) in the sense of long term sustainability: stagnation (which is
just fine at the position where Wikimedia is globally now).
- Decreasing: (a) in the sense of project growth: logarithmic growth
(n*1/m); (b) in the sense of long term sustainability: decline.

Here is the explanation of importance of charts:
- Contributors: This is not the best chart to look in. Number of
contributors can't fall and it is reasonable to expect some raise
every month -- if it is not about really small projects nor very big
problems at some project. Also, changes are not so visible (analysis
by just looking into it assumes measuring of curve angle).
- New Wikipedians: This is a very good and visible indicator. Linear
raising of the number assumes exponential growth; stagnation in
numbers assumes linear growth (the best possible development for us in
this situation), while decreasing number of Wikipedians means problems
for us.
- Active and very active Wikipedians: They are connected to the new
Wikipedians. If the number of NW (per month) raises, the number of AW
raises, if number of NW stagnates, number of AW stagnates; if number
of NW decreases, number of AW will decrease. The connection is simple:
some Wikipedians are leaving; if there is a number of others to
replace them, the number will stagnate; if there are more new
Wikipedians, the number will decrease; if there are more than enough
newcomers, number of active Wikipedians raises.
- Edits per month. This indicator has one more important value than
just signaling the number of active and very active contributors. A
lot of house keeping tasks may be done automatically, so this number
has to be in more or less constant correlation with the number of
articles.
- Other charts are relatively straight-forward. One more created
article means growing of database size and growing of number of
articles; and similar.

So, conclusion related to analyzed Wikipedias (and according to the
data up to May 2008) is:
- There are problems with French, Italian and Serbian Wikipedias. If
such trends continues, we would loose sustainability there.
- Japanese Wikipedia has serious problems; even data from the list
(from January to May) shows different situation. Again, it should be
good to hear, this time because the opposite reason, what is going on
there.
- Russian Wikipedia (up to May 2008, of course) is going fine (linear
growth at the project level, stagnation at the long term
sustainability). Why is it so -- it should be analyzed.

The only reasons which I may detect is a very strong ArbCom. If ArbCom
is able to say "that something is not a part of the community", then,
AFAIK, it is stronger than (still strong) en.wp ArbCom.

[1] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaFR.htm
[2] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaIT.htm
[3] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaSR.htm
[4] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaRU.htm
[5] - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaJA.htm