[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012

[ENWP Pine]

Erik,

Thanks for replying. Let me make sure that I understand. The graph at http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/new_editors isn’t affected by the bug, and we still believe that we have a declining number of new editors per month. However, the graphs for the number of active editors may be wrong, since edit counts may be wrong. Is this correct?

The bulk of my previous comments would stand even with upward revisions to the counts of active editors. WMF is investing multiple staff and what I perceive to be a significant amount of financial resources with the goal of increasing the number of active editors, and the statistics related to these efforts are relevant to the strategic plan. I believe that monthly updates would be appropriate and welcome.

Thanks,

Pine


-----Original Message-----
From: "Erik Zachte" <ezachte at wikimedia.org>
To: "'Wikimedia Mailing List'" <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012
Message-ID: <004b01cd4cca$1ae54430$50afcc90$@wikimedia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It may well be that the trends are distorted due to major bug in wikistats.
That bug has been isolated, but we need 7-10 days to regenerate all reports.
See also
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2012/06/wikistats-editor-counts-are-broken/

Sorry for the confusion and inconvenience. 

Erik Zachte

-----Original Message-----
From: wikimedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of ENWP Pine
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:20 PM
To: wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012

Tilman,

Thanks for the report.

I would like to suggest that for the foreseeable future (not just for June),
these monthly reports should include a fuller set of updates on the editor
engagement and retention efforts. My understanding is that this is a high
priority effort for WMF, it seems to involve a fairly significant number of
WMF FTEs and LTEs, and I think it is of interest to the global Wikimedia
community.

Personally I am very concerned about the continuing slide in the number of
active editors. There are many areas on ENWP where having a few more active
editors would be very helpful, and I speculate that other projects would
also appreciate having additional active editors. My concerns are
illustrated beautifully on some of the graphs here: 
"http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/new_editors",
"http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors", and
"http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors_target".

I would like to hear more about what progress is being made to improve the
trends. We heard about the Teahouse and new initiatives for Arabic
Wikipedia, which are very good, and I especially appreciated the detailed
reports on the Teahouse pilot that were sent to ENWP participants' talk
pages through "The Tea Leaf" newsletter, including links to
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host_lounge/Metrics" and
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/Pilot_report". I also
appreciated reading about the progress of India communications and community
support. I would like to hear more about what the projected effects of these
initiatives will be on the editor statistics in the global report cards,
have the projections compared to actuals, and get updates on these
projections and actuals each month. The amount of staff and financial
resources that are invested in editor engagement (including development of
the visual editor), and the importance of the outcomes of those efforts for
the movement and Wikimedia Strategic Plan priorities, are of significant
interest to me and I imagine to many other members of the global Wikimedia
community.

Thank you,

Pine