[Wikimedia-l] change in article edits after visual editor roll-out (was Re: Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation)

[James Salsman]

Robert Rohde wrote:
>...
> early evidence that VE makes new users less likely to edit [2][3]
>...
> [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:VisualEditor%27s_effect_on_newly_registered_editors/Results
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback&oldid=565381622#Some_performance_notes
>...

[2] states: "Newcomers with the VisualEditor were ~43% less likely to
save a single edit than editors with the wikitext editor (x^2=279.4,
p<0.001), meaning that Visual Editor presented nearly a 2:1 increase
in editing difficulty."

[3] states:

> Change in total (daily) article edits since before VE became default on 1 July (comparison: 18-30 June): -4.5%
> Change in registered user article edits since before VE became default: -2.2%
> Change in anon article edits since before VE became default: -8.6%

Both of those statistics are terrible and would strongly support
shutting the visual editor off except for opt-ins until all open bugs
including browser and mobile device coverage are addressed before
trying again.

But why are those statistics so different?