[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Pavlo Shevelo]

> * ... Older age groups are not interesting
> anymore in the sense of quantity

Are we really interested in quantity as that? Are we?

> 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?).

:)
My point is not switch from "15-24" to "50+" age limits, but to object
narrowing of limits too much.
I mean that combining of several age diapasons could provide "best of
two worlds" result.

And "recruiting" process should go as snowball - for example "50s"
should hunt for more "50s" (as "30s" seems not mature enough to do
that really well :) )


On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Milos Rancic<millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).
>
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