A couple of concrete ideas

I believe that the retention rate of Newbie editors would best be improved by

1. instating training/welcoming programmes to make them feel more welcome and to mentor them into the community. This would entail identifying new contributors to other contributors so that sufficient considerations can be taken of their status.
2. weeding out badfaith and non-constructive contributors at an earlier stage to make it easier for older editors to assume good faith towards those who are actually trying to do the right thing but just don't have the skill.I think that disabling or restricting anonymous editing would be a good first step. One way to achieve the same effect could be by requiring changes by IP's to be reviewed by editors before they appear on the page, the editors could then identify goodfaith contributors give them a cordial welcome, induct them into the training programme and encourage them to get a user account. That would require people to decide whether they want to be a part of the community from their first edits.
3. inventing new and better ways of giving positive feedback to editors, new and old. Currently the quality controls only operate with negative feedback - noone gets a pat on the back for having contributed something, but anyone who contributes something below the expected standard will get negative feedback right away. I think the GA and FA processes which ought to serve as a kind of positive feedback do not currently serve that function - but rather become frustrating and negative experiences for many editors who hope to be told they've been doing a good job but invariably end up being criticized for not having lived up to the "criteria". Reviewers and older editors all to easy get caught up in the role of "defender of the wiki" - and newbies and reviewee invariably are cast in the role not as "improvers of the wiki" but as possible agents of degradation of it. Barnstars are rarely used anymore. Maybe something silly like "wikipedian of the week" - where editors can nominate eachother for doing good stuff, being civil and nice persons or for adding good content or being a helpful reviewer.
4. Introduce a harsher policy towards those who think that being a "valuable content editor" constitutes a license to not living up to a high standard of cordiality and civility.
5. Introduce a low tolerance policy towards those who are pushing pov's also those who are doing so civilly. Eternal discussions with povpushing SPA's is tiring for everyone. I think certain areas should be identified as High risk of POV pushing and editing restrictions should be more liberally handed out in these areas. These areas would be primarily those that tend to be plagued by nationalist, religious and political pov battling. Here maintaining civilty and policy is of the utmost importance - and currently articles in these topic areas generally have the worst articles in wikipedia.138.16.88.11 01:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)