On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 14:18, Ting Chen <tc...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > I encourage everyone to review Sue’s March update [2], and the editor > trends study itself [3]. It is a deeply important topic, and each report > is only a few pages long. ... > > The Board thinks this is the most significant challenge currently facing > our movement. ... > > [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/March_25-26 > [2] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/March_2011_Update > [3] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study > [4] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:March_2011_Update >
Hi Ting, One of the things I wondered about the editor trends study is whether it focused only on user names, as opposed to people. It says: "Between 2005 and 2007, newbies started having real trouble successfully joining the Wikimedia community. Before 2005 in the English Wikipedia, nearly 40% of new editors would still be active a year after their first edit. After 2007, only about 12-15% of new editors were still active a year after their first edit." A simple explanation is that a significant percentage of new accounts after 2007 were not new people, but people returning with new identities, sometimes multiple ones. Any regular editor will tell you that this happens a lot, for various reasons. Accounts are banned; privacy is compromised; people acquire a certain reputation with an account and want to start over; or they want a break from being User X, for whatever reason, and become User Y for a while. Did the study do anything to correlate number of accounts with number of people? Sarah _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
