On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > Mark Nilrad wrote: >> I'm curious, as the growth in Wikipedia has slowed, has the numbers of >> ACTIVE users slowed as well?
> If you're talking about the demographics of editors - I think it is now > more three years since WP attracted a very large group of people, > arriving over a few months only, who created a "boom" in article > production (quantity not quality). Many of those will have left by now - > others have become some of our most productive editors. This can only > happen once: WP became a Net phenomenon at some point in 2005, and that > was because all of a sudden many people heard of it who hadn't before, > or who had ignored it. I would say the growth in editors was "over > trend" at that point. We are seeing more like a sustainable rate now, > and probably (who knows?) a higher proportion of "encyclopedist" types. The short answer is yes, the number of active editors has declined. See [[Wikipedia:Editing frequency]] and [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/Editing stats]]. For the most part, I agree with Charles Matthews's hopeful interpretation that Wikipedia is entering a stable, sustainable phase, although others see more dire futures based on the demographic trends. I think a different sort of person may be attracted to the project now. Note, however, that although new users peaked in early 2007 (the same time community size peaked, and about six months after creation rate peaked), the rate of new accounts has actually been moderately stable, varying only about 50% since about 2006. Also, some published and unpublished studies suggest that the the editor turnover rate is considerably higher than MeatballWiki would have us believe, although I'm not yet clear how much that applies to the very, very active core of editors. >> Obviously, as you can read in the Slashdot comments (and many other places), >> this is not Wikipedia's strength, at all. >> > One thing that is not at all obvious to me is that there is any really > really credible reporting on this or other aspects of Wikipedia. It's > anecdotal at best - one or two incidents taken to stand for the site as > a whole, and its complexities. Plus people writing ignorant and > inaccurate stuff, of course. > Indeed. So much stuff goes on, and no one has really dared to dive in deep enough in a systematic way to produce convincing stories about the social dynamics of the project. I was thinking about this, and it might be nice to do some experiments to find out what kinds of experiences make new users become regular editors. Similar to what happened with the fundraiser banner messages, as a start maybe we could design several different new users greetings to replace standard template greetings, and randomly sort which message is given to any particular new users. Each message would emphasize something different about Wikipedia, e.g., community, needed new articles, citations and improving existing articles, having fun, doing something good for the world, etc. Then weeks, months, and a year later we can find out whether the initial frame of the project has a significant impact, and possibly tailor the way we treat newbies to better pull them into the community. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
