For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually around mid-to-late 2013. The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per month), but has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 edits per month).
This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement. In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition. The cohort of editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014. If you choose any edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account registered was 2006. That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade. (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, though not as huge as 2006.) If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will finally lose their crown in 2015. The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015. It will also be the second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased their total edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year accounts. I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic. I'm not sure we should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic collapse less likely. -Robert Rohde On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > James, > > Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have. > On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like > that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of > positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of > page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of > highly active editors. > > I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an > editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a > better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different > cohorts of editors. > > Pine > > On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" <jforres...@wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > > On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < > > werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago > > > < > > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus > > > >We > > > now have the August figures > > > <https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm>, and August has > > > continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The > English > > > Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace > than > > > for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures > are > > > up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though > this > > > doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels. > > > > > > > Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion. > > > > Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive > > term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", > > disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as > > non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term > is > > "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement. > > > > [Snip] > > > > editors making 5 or more saves > > > [is] > > > down > > > across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014. > > > > > > > So, actually, your title is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could > say: > > > > - "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but > meta-editors > > are up", > > - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or > > even > > - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English > > Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate > attempts to > > fix things"? > > > > > > But it's nice to have one metric be positive. > > > > > > > I'm not sure it is. What is the nature and value of these edits? Two > > editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no > > value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a > > single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism > > edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this? > > > > > > Yours, > > -- > > James D. Forrester > > Lead Product Manager, Editing > > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. > > > > jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
