Definitions

Definitions

I think that definitions of New Wikipedian and Active Editor does not fit (meaning there is a contradiction):

  • newcomer, who registered in, say, October'2010 and made, for example, 9 edits during that month will increase count of AE but will not be counted as NW (until some other month).

I think that definition of NW should be changed and threshold should be decreased to 5.

Besides I'd recommend to make more levels of activity (Very Active etc.) to explore the structure of AU community.

pavlosh00:25, 19 October 2010

Perhaps it is me not being a native speaker of English, but the New Wikipedian definition is confusing. First, the part "in the month of the 10th edit" is strange? What about those that haven't made 10 edits, and what about months prior and later than the 10th? Would an editor who has registered in 2002 and made 10 edits so far be a "New Wikipedian"?

Anyway, the numbers 10 and 5 seem to low for me. Granted, I am a very active editor, so that may bias me here a bit.

Let's define "newness" conceptually. Date of registration is a poor measure. What I think marks the transformation from new editor to regular is becoming aware of the community, rules and such. Till somebody starts editing seriously, they are new, even if they have been doing few edits every year. I would arbitrarily say that making more than 50 edits per year makes one aware of the community and rules, and thus marks the transformation from new to normal editor, so I'd define a New Editor as an editor who has less than X_years_of_Wiki_history*50 (for a dump analysis of X years of wiki history). Additionally, you could treat editors who have never posted on a talk/discussion page as new, even if they would meet the numerical threshold noted previously.

As for activity, 5 edits a month makes somebody rather inactive in my book. Introducing various levels of activity as pavlosh suggests is needed, but I wouldn't use the word active for anybody who has less than 1/edit per day, preferably 2, so let's say again - 50 edits per month.

As you note, editors go on breaks, and sometimes, come back. I'd suggest using a month as a time variable here, and look into what makes editors limit their activity, and resume it. With Interiot's edit counter down, I am not sure if there is any tool out there that I can use to show you the example of the intriguing graphs of editor's activity per month, but explaining them would be very useful.

Piotrus01:40, 19 October 2010

I think that three categories might be needed, "New", "Occasional", and "Active Editor". Or two dimensions: "activity" and "wiki knowledge/expertise". A regular editor of some Wikipedia who only makes 1 edit a month in English Wikipedia is very different from a new or occasional editor across Wikimedia projects.

The trouble is finding the proxies to measure "wiki knowledge/expertise". Expertise comes from experience in other wikis (especially MediaWiki instances for formattig, or other Wikimedia wikis for rough process/policy, though that does vary). Also from *reading* and contributing to Talk pages, policy, Wikipedia namespace discussions, XfD, Village Pump,... Or from off-wiki discussions on mailing lists or in person. Some of this comes from Readers are not free-riders: Reading as a form of participation on Wikipedia, which I highly recommend.

As for activity--I think it also matters whether the person has made a series of related edits (e.g. I often correct my edits and it could take three 'tries' to make one intended change) or a variety of different edits. Finding social roles in Wikipedia (PDF) may give some ideas for thinking about HOW activity varies, besides volume.

Details on the papers suggested above. Antin, J., & Cheshire, C. (2010). Readers are not free-riders: Reading as a form of participation on Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 127-130). Presented at the CSCW 2010, Savannah, Georgia, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/1718918.1718942

Welser, H. T., Cosley, D., Kossinets, G., Lin, A., Dokshin, F., Gay, G., & Smith, M. (2008). Finding social roles in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the American Sociological Association 2008. Presented at the American Sociological Association, Boston, MA, USA.

Jodi.a.schneider11:40, 19 October 2010

Dear Jodi,

1) I agree with you that a more granular roles differentiation is possible, but the question we are asking is which type of editors are leaving: the new ones or the more senior ones. Thus, we want first to shed light on who is leaving. A subsequent step could be a further categorization as you suggest to paint a more detailed picture.

2) Thanks for all the references, I will download those papers and have a look.

Drdee13:57, 19 October 2010
 

Dear Piotrus,

I will briefly answer your questions:

1) "In the month of the 10th edit" does not refer to October but refers to when a person makes his/her 10th edit. 10 is a threshold, the definition suggest that you are a New Wikipedian when you make 10 edits since the moment you registered.

2) You are concerned that the tresholds are too low: we will stick to the current tresholds but I will post some histograms to show the distribution of edits and that can possibly help us in refining these thresholds.

3) Thank you for pointing me at Interiot's edit counter, I will have a look.

Drdee13:46, 19 October 2010
 

Dear Pavlosh,

You make a valid point and I will discuss this with Howie and we will clarify this.

Drdee14:01, 19 October 2010

Dear Pavlosh,

To clarify the definitions: 1) The two metrics are unrelated. So yes a person can qualify for both in the same month (and Anonymous authors are not included).

2) We intend only to include edits from namespace 0 as that's the core content.

3) If time permits, we will use different thresholds to see how robust our findings are.


The suggested approach is consistent with Erik Zachte's stats.wikimedia.org approach.

Drdee18:56, 20 October 2010