[Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

[Robin McCain]

On 10/31/2011 6:01 AM, foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> On 31 October 2011 12:30, Oliver Keyes<scire.facias at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> >  Not sure about that specific change, but one illustration might be the
>> >  Article Feedback Tool, which contains a "you know you can edit, right?"
>> >  thing. Off the top of my head I think 17.4 percent of the 30-40,000 people
>> >  who use it per day attempt to edit as a result of that inducement.
>> >  Admittedly only 2 percent of them*succeed*, but it's not a lack of
>> >  motivation, methinks.
> What's the definition of "succeed" there - they save an edit with a change?
>
> Is that 2% of the 17.4%, or 2% of those giving feedback?
>
> I wonder if there's a way to detect a failure to edit and ask what went wrong.
In a text driven interface it is a little difficult to float an 
interactive window asking if a reader saw any errors and if they'd like 
to fix them - yet that's the level most readers are on.

We must also remember that the wiki edit interface and markup can be a 
little intimidating to a newbie, so opening an edit window and making no 
changes may be more common than we think. Are there any stats on this?