Hi Tilman,

Apologies that it’s taken some time to get back to you.

We had initially published these numbers as part of Katherine’s
announcement on our website
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/02/04/wikimedia-foundation-ceo-katherine-maher-to-step-down-in-april-2021/>
that she was stepping down. After you emailed, we went back through our
data sources and discovered an error: the growth in engagement came from
sources that used different definitions and filters. For 2015, only
Wikipedias were included in the totals for pageviews[1] and active
editors[2]; however, for 2020, our data included pageviews and active
editors across all Wikimedia sites[3]. When we corrected for this error as
well as an error related to data normalization, we saw that pageviews
increased 24 percent (not 30 percent) over that time period[3,4], and
active editors increased 18 percent, not 36 percent[3,5].

We have issued a correction for the website. Thank you for flagging this so
that we were able to catch and correct this error!

Warm regards,

Kate

[1] December 2015 pageview data from
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm

[2] December 2015 active editor data from
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

[3] December 2020 content interactions and active editor data from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:December_2020_Wikimedia_movement_metrics.pdf


[4] December 2015 pageview data from
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyAllProjectsOriginal.htm

[5] December 2015 active editor data from an internal query across all
Wikimedia sites, showing 79,420 active editors

--

Kate Zimmerman (she/they)
Director of Data Science, Product Analytics
Wikimedia Foundation

On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 1:56 AM Tilman Bayer <[email protected]> wrote:

> In her recent announcement of her upcoming departure as the Wikimedia
> Foundation's CEO, Katherine highlighted a growth in "reader
> engagement" by 30% during her tenure (i.e. since 2016).[1]  A WMF
> board member since reported in somewhat more detail that this refers
> to "~1 billion interactions up 32% in six years".[2]
> Are the underlying numbers published somewhere?
>
> Regards, Tilman
>
> [1] https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1357390962410987520
> [2] https://twitter.com/raju/status/1371100758343614471
>
> PS: As some may be aware, a widely read German blogger linked to
> Katherine's tweet while singling out the "reader engagement" bit for
> some outspoken criticism. Just to clarify, that's not why I'm asking
> (in fact I disagree with most of that criticism).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Analytics mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>
_______________________________________________
Analytics mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

Reply via email to