[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Milos Rancic]

Initially, I wanted to ask questions; to say that we need this or that
analysis. But, I realized that I am able to make some approximations
based on my Wikimedian experience. Of course, if we get more precise
data, we would be able to make more precise conclusions.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Pavlo Shevelo<pavlo.shevelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If we assume that our target groups
>> are between 15 and 24...
> (and you never went over age of 35 in your analisys)

15-24 is the main recruiting phase. Also, there is the next reasoning behind it:

* We already reached the peak. Older age groups are not interesting
anymore in the sense of quantity (of course, retired academicians
*are* interesting, but there are not a lot of them; again, relatively
speaking).
* If we reached the peak, we are able just to catch new generations in
bigger numbers.
* Also, statistically, old people are dying more often than young
people. Fortunately our generations (20+, 30+ and 40+) will become
retired academicians or so one day in the future and then we'll have a
very nice expansion in the number of highly qualified contributors.
However, if we don't attract younger than us, Wikimedia projects will
die with us.

In other words, whatever we want or prefer, projects which hope that
their main recruiting age is older than 30 -- are dead projects in the
long run (i.e., if you are spending time of people in 30s to recruit
people in 50s, who will spend time to recruit more people in 50s when
those who are now in 30s will be in 70s?).

> I mean are you talking about people who just come (enter the door), or
> about those, who come and stay (don’t leave and eventually grow to
> “most active”)?
>
> My aim is to point following: to accommodate newcomers is not less
> important than to attract attention (educate as you say) of
> prospective candidates.

Whatever means in the official statistics. It would be good to have
numbers about newcomers and those who made 10 or 100 edits, so we may
compare how do we attract attention through the time. However, I think
that those numbers are relatively stable in the past couple of years
(let's say, from 2005 or so).