[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Chris Keating]

There are so many potential ways of recruiting new high-quality editors.
However, at the moment almost all of them founder (at least on the English
Wikipedia) on the likely reception of peoples' first edits.

Take, for the sake of argument, Wikimedia UK's donor list. There are 50,000
people who care enough about Wikipedia to have put their hands in their
pockets to donate to it, and who are on the whole very well-educated - in
short, just what you want for "high-quality" contributors. (If someone has
given money to support Wikipedia, it's unlikely that if they tried to edit
it, they would be consciously trying to damage it).

It would be relatively easy to get 1% - maybe 10% - of them to try editing
with a well-written email or two. However, at the moment, most of them
probably wouldn't find it a positive experience if they did, which is a
shame...

Chris