[Wikimedia-l] What community initiatives have made an impact on editor engagement?

[Steven Walling]

On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrandecic at wikimedia.de> wrote:

> Wait - removing the captchas lead to a decrease of reverted edits in terms
> of absolute numbers? Woot? Anyone has an explanation for that?


I think the explanation is pretty clear from the numbers Nemo shared. This
CAPTCHA was annoying as hell, and was directed not just at people adding
links or hitting some kind of AbuseFilter, but everyone who was editing
anonymously or with a new account. It was literally throwing the baby out
with the bath water.

As someone who had to experience that CAPTCHA as a new user on ptwiki last
year, I am not surprised at all that we attracted many more positive
contributions just by removing it. Sadly, from looking at bug 49860 and
gerrit change 69982, it seems that this deeply annoying feature is going to
be put back in place.

-- 
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/