> A few years ago the WMF did a survey of former editors, partly to
> learn why they'd left. One of the most common responses was "I haven't left
> yet".
With the benefit of hindsight (a wonderful thing), that might be a bad way to
have asked the question. A better way might have been to ask why they are no
longer active and what circumstances/change would be likely to make them active
again. What we really want to know if the reasons for inactivity are
internal/external to Wikipedia and whether the conditions for re-engagement are
internal/external to Wikipedia. And for the internal ones, we'd like to know
more specifically what they are.
"I haven't left yet, but as soon as my new baby has started school, I might
have the time for Wikipedia again" (i.e. the cause of inactivity and return to
activity is outside of Wikipedia's control). There is not a lot Wikipedia can
do about such a contributors.
"I left because I was sick and tired of the unpleasant way people behave, but I
enjoyed contributing otherwise and would do so again if the culture was a lot
nicer" is something that WP has some control over but not something you can fix
in an afternoon.
"I left because I just found it too hard, I kept forgetting when to use [[ and
when to use {{ and I never figured out that <ref> thing" is someone that we
could potentially re-engage on the spot by saying "hey, try the Visual Editor!".
Or maybe "I haven't left yet" is more literally true than we think. It is
possible that the person is still active on Wikipedia but under a different
user name or as an IP so they just appear to have become inactive under their
former user name. If a person has had some unpleasant experiences on Wikipedia
and that is why they became inactive, there are a lot of good reasons why they
might not like to return under the same user name. Wikipedia has an infinitely
long memory for things like bans and blocks and watch lists last forever. If
you got yourself in trouble previously but you want to start afresh, you
probably want to create a new account. If you had bad experiences with some
other user who was regularly unpleasant to you, you would want a new account as
they can watch your User page and Talk page forever to detect if you ever
return. *Changing* your user name doesn't solve that problem, creating a new
account does. And of course you may just have forgotten your username or your
password and created a new account.
Personally, I am inclined to think that the "I haven't left yet" editors (who
aren't active under another user name) are probably effectively lost to us.
Some other interest has almost certainly chewed up their spare time during
their absence from Wikipedia. There's a big gap between "I'm not saying No" to
"I'm saying Yes".
The other issue is that even if the desired circumstances for re-engagement are
in place, you still need some kind of way to communicate this fact to the "lost
users". Given that providing an email address isn’t mandatory on creating an
account, we can only communicate with those who did provide an email address
and hope it is still an active one.
For example, perhaps we should be emailing all the "lost users" (where we can)
periodically and saying "Hey, try that Visual Editor" or "get involved with
#1Lib1Ref" or mentioning some other positive thing that might convince them to
give it another go.
It's been said (and I really don't know if it's true) that people respond
better to being needed than to being wanted. Maybe we can use that in Project
Boomerang. Find an article that the lost user has made a lot of contributions
to but which hasn't grown much since (ignoring all the re-categorisations, MoS
enforcements, reverted vandalisms, and other edits that don't greatly enhance
the information content of an article) and tell them that article XYZ needs
them to come and keep it up-to-date.
In sales, they often say it is 10x the effort to get a new customer than to
retain an existing one. Maybe instead of putting effort into onboarding new
users (who we have to put through a massive learning curve very fast or watch
them die the slow death of many reverts and AfC rejections), we should put more
effort into re-engaging lost users (there's less of a learning curve to bring
them back).
Kerry
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