[Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: "Big data" benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Andreas Kolbe, 10/01/2013 19:21:
 > Open these two pages:
 >
 > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaFR.htm
 > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
 >
 > Each has four bar charts with yellow bars. Ignore the top two charts. 
Focus
 > on the third and fourth charts with yellow bars.
 >
 > Random fluctuations aside, the ones for French show a consistent upward
 > trend.

They don't.

Errata corrige:

Federico Leva (Nemo), 10/01/2013 17:58:
> "New editors" is not reliable because one edit is enough, number of
> edits or (new) articles have too much bot noise, database size/words is
> often useful but even more often not available for WikiStats performance
> limitations.

Ten edits, naturally, not one. One should also take into account when 
the "birth date" as new contributor is defined to be.[1]

Still on external factors, it's also fun to play with 
http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/ , "State of the Internet Data 
Visualization" per country.
For instance, several countries seem to have stagnated for years (since 
the beginning of the reports) as regards broadband adoption; Japan has a 
mysterious drop in 2011 which seems to have an identical drop in active 
ja.wiki editors, recovered at the same time in early 2012; Russia has an 
explosion which one could think caused TheSeptemberThatNeverEnded that 
we're still seeing; France has a big peak in the first half of 2012.
But again, this is just playing, we still know so little.

Actually, I don't even know if WMF is still focussing on (en.wiki) 
editor retention or rather on editor recruitment: does someone know?

Nemo

[1] I've added a note about it in the very useful new page on 
definitions: 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Metric_definitions#Contributor>