On 18 October 2017 at 12:12, Brian Wolff <bawo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 7:03 PM, Srishti Sethi <sse...@wikimedia.org> 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
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? Weak figures are unsurprising, at least when compared to other percentages in the Wikiverse, like truly miniscule levels of new editor retention that have been measured from investing in edit-a-thons. However the first statement in the report of "we are attracting around 54 developers per quarter and retaining 8% of them", i.e. 4/54, feels low enough to have a review of whether the events to attract developers are worth doing in their current formats. The return on investment in terms of volunteer time and basic expenses, must make them "non-successes". P.S. while on the perennial issue of jargon, could we avoid "noticings"? It's a neologism nobody ever needed, though I appreciated the use of "taken with a grain of salt". Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>