Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Gergo Tisza]

Thanks Srishti & DevRel team, that was interesting, and it's great to see
that developer retention gets the organizational focus it deserves.

Some comments on the document:

We currently struggle to keep track of information about new developers
> such as project they worked on, their contact details (e.g., Phabricator,
> Gerrit, and Github username), etc.


FWIW this is a problem with all developers, not just new ones. For example
after I find out who is the best person to ask about something, there isn't
really way to find out their IRC account. (Or vice versa, know who I've
just talked with on IRC.) Phabricator can be linked to mediawiki.org and
wikitech but few people do both. And so on. The WMF has its private contact
list, but even that is not always updated, and it's unaccessible to
volunteers. It would be great to have a proper, public contact info
management system somewhere.


Re: surveys, it would be a missed opportunity to only survey new
developers. The limitation in that is that only a small fraction of them
become regulars, and it would be great to understand better what
personality trait or circumstance determines whether a given person stays
or leaves, but the only way to find that out is to survey people whom we
already know remained (or left) about their experiences as new developers.

Re: retention (the raw numbers for which can be found in T160430#3395405),
apparently year-on-year for Q3 2017 is interpreted as "(developers who
started in 2016 Q3 and were still active in 2017 Q3 / all developers who
started in 2016 Q3) / (developers who started in 2015 Q3 and were still
active in 2016 Q3 / all developers who started in 2015 Q3)" which is a
weird definition. YoY should be the difference in retention between two
full years, not between two quarters spaced one year apart.

One thing that jumps out looking at the list of retained developers is how
many of them are experienced Wikipedians (at a glance, something like
two-thirds?). Which I guess is not that surprising, but I wonder to what
extent is it reflected in the outreach strategy?


On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Srishti Sethi 
wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I would like to share the first edition of the New Developers Quarterly
> Report 
> that the Developer Relations team has produced. This report covers metrics,
> survey analysis and lessons learned from new developers focused activities
> in the previous quarter (July-September 2017).
>
> If you have questions and feedback that you would like to share with us,
> please add them on the discussion
> 
> page.
>
> To receive a notification when a new report is published, subscribe here
> .
>
> We plan to release a report every quarter and take action items identified
> from the key findings for improving our existing methods and processes. The
> next release will be in January 2018.
>
> If you have any questions, comments, and concerns, we will be more than
> happy to hear them!
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Srishti
>
>
> --
> Srishti Sethi
> Developer Advocate
> Technical Collaboration team
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF)
>
> ___
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>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Lodewijk]

Just trying to understand: this is the percentage change of a percentage?
Or the percentage change of the absolute retention?
(I would be particularly interested in the latter, as the former could be
muddied by successful efforts to have more people make a first contribution)

Lodewijk


On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> On 18 October 2017 at 18:32, Brian Wolff  wrote:
> > Fae wrote:
> >>Does the minus symbol in "-60.0%" mean anything? Being a retention
> >>percentage, I do not understand how it can be negative unless
> >>potential volunteers are getting rejected at the door before they can
> >>sign-up. Could that be corrected?
> >
> > My understanding is that this means that the rentention percentage was
> > 60% (or is it percentage points?) less than it was this time last
> > year.
> >
> > So its now 5%, but this time last year it was 12%.
> >
> > --
> > bawolff
>
> Ah, thanks for the clarification. I have a background as a
> mathematician, but that report with second-order numbers had me foxed.
>
> Now I think I understand the stats, I probably correctly appreciate
> that whatever actions were taken in the last 12 months to retain
> volunteers were not "non-successes", they are super fantastic
> management team learning points for the coming year...
>
> Suggestion, throw away the current plan and rather than using findings
> to create incremental improvement,[1] try something completely
> different before all the wheels fall off. I look forward to seeing
> some serious radical initiatives.
>
> Links:
> 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Quim Gil]

Hi,

I am very happy to see that the New Developers Quarterly report is raising
some interest. Yes, there are important problems of sustainability in our
developer community that deserve attention.

On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 8:21 PM, Fæ  wrote:

> Suggestion, throw away the current plan and rather than using findings
> to create incremental improvement,[1] try something completely
> different before all the wheels fall off. I look forward to seeing
> some serious radical initiatives.
>

The good news is that we have done this already.  :)

The retention numbers for this quarter correspond to the newcomers who
landed between ~April-September 2016. We can expect there developers
attracted by our hackathons in Jerusalem and Esino Lario, and the
corresponding Google Summer of Code and Outreachy rounds. It was by that
time when the Technical Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation (who
co-organizes these activities with mentors and affiliates) was digging
beyond our apparent success, deeper into the problem of developer
retention. Then we started to think that we should focus on new developers,
even if that meant less focus for our more experienced technical
contributors.

Since then, we have radically changed our plans and we are experimenting in
various ways. You can find a comprehensive explanation in a blog post
published last week: How Technical Collaboration is bringing new developers
into the Wikimedia movement


Since we are discussing about new developers, let me also recommend you
another blog published just yesterday: Towards building an African
Wikimedia Developer Community

.

Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates, we welcome your ideas and involvement!
When our developer community grows, everybody benefits.

-- 
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[James Salsman]

Brian Wolff wrote:

> [The developer retention rate is] now 5%, but this time last year it was 12%.

It's currently 8% per
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Developers/Quarterly/2017-10#Key_findings

And the time series is the third graph under
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Developers/Quarterly/2017-10#Key_findings

...the first two of which are more important and solid. The variance
of the retention rate is high, so its downward trend isn't too
serious, but it would be nice if we could increase it.

Speaking of new developer retention, Brian, would you be willing to
mentor Brij Mohan at
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2017/August#Pronunciation_evaluation_gadget_for_Wiktionary:_GSoC_2017
? I would prefer that an experienced developer take over because I
have little experience with gadget scripting.

Best regards,
James

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Fæ]

On 18 October 2017 at 18:32, Brian Wolff  wrote:
> Fae wrote:
>>Does the minus symbol in "-60.0%" mean anything? Being a retention
>>percentage, I do not understand how it can be negative unless
>>potential volunteers are getting rejected at the door before they can
>>sign-up. Could that be corrected?
>
> My understanding is that this means that the rentention percentage was
> 60% (or is it percentage points?) less than it was this time last
> year.
>
> So its now 5%, but this time last year it was 12%.
>
> --
> bawolff

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I have a background as a
mathematician, but that report with second-order numbers had me foxed.

Now I think I understand the stats, I probably correctly appreciate
that whatever actions were taken in the last 12 months to retain
volunteers were not "non-successes", they are super fantastic
management team learning points for the coming year...

Suggestion, throw away the current plan and rather than using findings
to create incremental improvement,[1] try something completely
different before all the wheels fall off. I look forward to seeing
some serious radical initiatives.

Links:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Brian Wolff]

Fae wrote:
>Does the minus symbol in "-60.0%" mean anything? Being a retention
>percentage, I do not understand how it can be negative unless
>potential volunteers are getting rejected at the door before they can
>sign-up. Could that be corrected?

My understanding is that this means that the rentention percentage was
60% (or is it percentage points?) less than it was this time last
year.

So its now 5%, but this time last year it was 12%.

--
bawolff

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Brian Wolff]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 7:03 PM, Srishti Sethi  wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> I would like to share the first edition of the New Developers Quarterly
> Report that the Developer Relations team has produced. This report covers
> metrics, survey analysis and lessons learned from new developers focused
> activities in the previous quarter (July-September 2017).
>
>
> If you have questions and feedback that you would like to share with us,
> please add them on the discussion page.
>
>
> To receive a notification when a new report is published, subscribe here.
>
>
> We plan to release a report every quarter and take action items identified
> from the key findings for improving our existing methods and processes. The
> next release will be in January 2018.
>
>
> If you have any questions, comments, and concerns, we will be more than
> happy to hear them!
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Srishti
>
>

From the report:

>Percentage of volunteers active one year (± 3 months) after their first 
>contribution, out of all new volunteers attracted one year ago (between 
>April–June >2016). (Source: Calculation on data)
>
>QoQ: -26.5%. YoY: -60.0%

That's kind of scary

--
bawolff

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