Research:New editor motivations and trajectories

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Research:Projects

This page documents a proposed research project.
Information may be incomplete and may change before the project starts.

If we ran a microsurvey for new editors upon registration (like the 2011 Post-registration survey) and then tracked their subsequent editing activity, we could get a pretty good picture about how initial motivations influenced retention.

Then we could design to support retention among the users we think it is most important (for the wiki) to keep. Maybe even build predictive models based on the editing patterns of new editors who come in with different motivations, kind of like the characterizing Wikipedia Reader behavior study. Those models could be used to track changes in motivation-driven new editor editing patterns over time, potentially track those patterns historically, or across wikis. And we could use them to evaluate the long-term impact of various onboarding interventions are doing at increasing retention among, say, people who joined in order to create new articles that are NOT about themselves/their company/their amazing product.

Methods

Describe in this section the methods you'll be using to conduct your research. If the project involves recruiting Wikimedia/Wikipedia editors for a survey or interview, please describe the suggested recruitment method and the size of the sample. Please include links to consent forms, survey/interview questions and user-interface mock-ups.

Timeline

Please provide in this section a short timeline with the main milestones and deliverables (if any) for this project.

Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research

It's very important that researchers do not disrupt Wikipedians' work. Please add to this section any consideration relevant to ethical implications of your project or references to Wikimedia policies, if applicable. If your study has been approved by an ethical committee or an institutional review board (IRB), please quote the corresponding reference and date of approval.

Results

Once your study completes, describe the results an their implications here. Don't forget to make status=complete above when you are done.