On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 2:07 AM, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfaker@gmail.comwrote:
The "retention problem" isn't just relevant to new editors. Retaining experienced Wikipedians is an equally substantial term in the equation.
Back to Laura's question: I don't know about any research of Wiki meetups, but there's been research of everything2 meetups and potential effects on participation (from WikiSym'11). See cite and free(ish) link below.
Wyl McCully, Cliff Lampe, Chandan Sarkar, Alcides Velasquez, and Akshaya Sreevinasan. 2011. Online and offline interactions in online communities. In *Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration* (WikiSym '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 39-48. http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/_media/proceedings:p39-mccully.pdf
Awesome. :) Thanks. Very helpful. :)
It was a question came up related to a project I was working on. Anecdotal evidence from my local area seems to support the idea that those who do not attend and stay leave the project... but I've not looked into that much. Would be great to see some research on this in terms of retention. :)
I know from my own experience, knowing who I edit with keeps me sane and I've met some really fantastic people around the globe.