Glossary of Terms

This is a good discussion: thank you to the people contributing here. In hopes it is useful: here is a glossary of terms I've been using in discussions about participation.

• Active editors refers to people who have made five or more edits in the previous month. Active editors cycle in and out of the projects regularly as people take wiki-breaks for various reasons. So, the fact that an individual person doesn’t get counted as an active editor doesn’t mean they have stopped editing permanently: it just means that they didn’t edit in the previous month. The active editors number also includes very active editors.

• Very active editors refers to people who have made 100+ edits in the previous month. Very active editors are a subset of active editors.

• Editor -1 (also E-1) refers to readers who have never formed the intent to edit. They may or may not know that editing is possible, and they might or might not become editors in future.

• Editor 0 (also E0) refers to readers who have formed the intent to edit, but who have not yet successfully completed an edit. A person could stay at the Editor 0 stage of the lifecycle for seconds or for years. This group includes vandals, pranksters and scammers, as well as good faith newcomers.

• Editor 1-99 (also E1-99, also inexperienced editors) are people who have successfully completed at least one edit, but are probably not yet committed to editing on an ongoing basis. This group includes vandals, pranksters, spammers and good faith newcomers. These people, because they are new, are particularly vulnerable to becoming demotivated or disenchanted.

• Editor 100-999 (also E100-999, also experienced editors) have successfully completed at least 100 edits. They have basic wiki skills and understand basic editorial policies and practices. There are probably fewer vandals, pranksters and spammers in this group than in E1-99, although there may still be some.

• Editor 1000+ (also E1000+, also very experienced editors) are people who have successfully completed at least 1000 edits. They have good wiki skills and a good understanding of editorial policies and practices. This is the group that’s likeliest to include admins, stewards, patrollers, Arb Com members, and so forth.

• Lapsed editors (also inactive editors) are people who used to be active or very active editors, who have not made 5+ edits in the previous month, and who have not made a decision to stop editing permanently. Lapsed editors can be inexperienced, experienced or very experienced. Server log data can’t help us distinguish between lapsed/inactive editors and former/departed editors.

• Former editors (also departed editors) refers to people who used to be active editors, but who have not made 5+ edits in the previous month, and who have made a decision to stop editing permanently. Lapsed editors can be inexperienced, experienced or very experienced. Server log data can’t help us distinguish between lapsed/inactive editors and former/departed editors. The Former Editors Survey aspired to survey former/departed editors, but ended up surveying a mix of former and lapsed editors, because it was not possible to exclude the latter.

ROFLMAO.

I had been editing wikis for literally years before I did my first edit on wikipedia - as an IP. I'm quite certain I was competent before reaching 100 edits. I created an account only when I decided to create articles. I suspect I'm not unique, or even all that rare. (If you count multilingual wikipedia editors making their first edits in their second or third languages, I'm sure this is rather common.)

Also, the edit count method is inherently flawed. Some people tend to make dozens of minor changes with one edit; others do a separate edit for each one. Much depends on how often they get interrupted, and how reliable their computer may be. It's also a matter of proofreading style.

Am I an inactive editor if I create an article a month, using a single edit ;-)

You raise a bunch of important issues with measurement. We do need to account for anonymous editors as they comprise about 31% of all edits. Please see this reply on a related thread.

Edit count is imperfect (as are most metrics), but it does give us a basic understanding of the broad trends within our communities. We should use multiple metrics to make sure we're looking at these issues from different angles. Please see this section of the study (limitations of this study --> areas we should investigate in future work) and this post for some ideas that have been discussed.

Well, I am an E1000+ if you count my contributions, so apparently I'm some kind of Wikipedia guru. But I feel like a babe in the woods most of the time on Wikipedia. I keep imagining that one day I will finally figure out a whole load of things that have been mysteries to me for the past few years. Every time I turn around someone seems to be complaining about something I've done (although I am not clear about exactly what it is), been unable to edit content because I cannot fathom what a template is doing (and every edit I do to it breaks the page), and I never seem to be able to find out the answer (the Help pages never seem to have the answer to my question).

I saw a comment somewhere about whether people felt they are members of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community. After a number of years, I never have. Partly because (until I stumbled on this page this morning) I never found anywhere I could talk to anyone, and talking is surely the basis for community. Has there been a place to talk that I never found before?

For example, why is my username showing on this page in red (it means it doesn't exist)? It seems to exist when I login.

Kerry,

It's because this actually a separate site, just like the various language versions of Wikipedia are actually separate websites each running similar versions of the same software. The Wikimedia "single user login" system automatically created an account for you here since you were logged in on your home wiki, but it is a new account with a new user page has yet to be created. That's why it's a redlink. Make sense?

Kerry, Your name in red refers to your userpage (rather cryptically, I agree). If you click on it, and then leave content about yourself on that page, you'll see it turn into a blue link.

Philippe, I do have content on my user page. I think Steve's explanation may be correct. This is a wikimedia page not a wikipedia page, but if the Wikimedia single user login is smart enough to still know who I am, why isn't it smart enough to have the link back to my Wikipedia user page? Or for that matter, why not have single sign-on across all the WikiMedia projects and a single user page? Still, thank you for your answers to something that has been bugging me for some time.

I'm sorry, Kerry- your userpage on this wiki, and not on the English Wikipedia.

Your userpage on this wiki is at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kerry_Raymond On the english wikipedia, it's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kerry_Raymond

You'll note that the addresses are different - they're different sites, linked with a single login, as Steven said.

The reason that we don't have it automatically pull your userpage from one wiki is that many people operate in several different languages, and they'll have different userpages for each of those languages or functions.

Kerry, you're right on your first idea. What the single user login should be doing is automagically displaying links to each of your other user pages. If nothing else, that would help other people track you down if they wanted to post a message where you would be likely to read it. Since that's not happening, you probably should add the link yourself. :-)

And here is a +1 on this "feature" for single log in. Link to User page, or even choosing in your SUL preferences the "default user page" you'd like to use on new wikis, great idea.

I believe the red name means you haven't created a user page - on this particular (strategy) wiki; you may well have one on e.g. english wikipedia.