Wikimedia Research/Showcase/Archive/2014/05

May 2014

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May 21, 2014 Video: Commons YouTube

A bird's eye view of editor activation
by Dario Taraborelli -- In this talk I will give a high-level overview of data on new editor activation, presenting longitudinal data from the largest Wikipedias, a comparison between desktop and mobile registrations and the relative activation rates of different cohorts of newbies.
Collaboration patterns in Articles for Creation
 
slides
by Aaron Halfaker -- Wikipedia needs to attract and retain newcomers while also increasing the quality of its content. Yet new Wikipedia users are disproportionately affected by the quality assurance mechanisms designed to thwart spammers and promoters. English Wikipedia’s en:WP:Articles for Creation provides a protected space for newcomers to draft articles, which are reviewed against minimum quality guidelines before they are published. In this presentation, describe and a study of how this drafting process has affected the productivity of newcomers in Wikipedia. Using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, I'll show the process's pre-publication review, which is intended to improve the success of newcomers, in fact decreases newcomer productivity in English Wikipedia and offer recommendations for system designers.