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

[James Salsman]

Nathan wrote:
>...
> Because they are measuring different things? The first refers
> to newly registered editors, which the second (judging by
> your summary) does not.

You are absolutely right. This gives us a silver lining insight that about
80% of anonymous IP editors have the editing experience of
non-new registered editors. Therefore most of them should be added to the
number of long term active editors, and even by a conservative estimate
that means that the Foundation has finally reached the elusive long term
strategic goal in growth of active editors.  Congratulations!

Always look on the bright side!

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?