[Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

[Michael Snow]

On 10/31/2011 10:09 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> Robin McCain, 31/10/2011 17:20:
>> 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?
> Yes, it was something like 70 % of "edit" clicks are not followed by
> save. It's difficuilt to tell how many of those were people (or even
> stupid bots) looking for the source text.
For me, the most common reason why an "edit" click is not followed by a 
"save" is because I end up not having the time to complete the work, or 
the edit I had in mind becomes more complicated than I thought 
(sometimes the latter partly explains the former). To put it 
idiomatically, it's a reaction to biting off more than I can chew.

That may not be entirely typical, but in the sense of "editing proved 
more difficult than anticipated" it probably explains many abortive 
attempts at editing. I suppose it's been suggested before, but I think 
more fine-grained section editing capability, so you can simply 
highlight any portion of an article and open an edit window for just 
that portion, could be helpful.

--Michael Snow