Research:Portuguese Wikipedia trends and behavior/General Editor Trends

Research Summary

The goal of the the brief look into the editor trends of Portuguese Wikipedia (PT-WP) was to get an idea if PT-WP was having a hard time either (a) attracting new contributors (i.e., inflow) or (b) retaining contributors (i.e., outflow).

It appears as if the editor profile for PT-WP has remained more or less consistent over the past years, with fairly steady growth initially, followed by consistent participation. Note that this is very different from the results found for the EN-WP and other language projects, which showed exponential growth in new editors specifically, followed by declines in recent years.

In text, green indicates hipotheses and blue indicates further research to be done.

Key Findings

Key Findings: PT-WP Editor Trends
1. Total number of editors has held relatively constant since beginning of 2008: ~6000 total editors (>1 edit, no bots) ~2000 active editors (>5 edits, no bots)
2. The inflow of new editors has remained proportional to the total editors since 2007: ~50% new editors (>1 edit, no bots) ~25% of active editors (>5 edits, no bots)
3. Moreover, the outflow of new editors has also held constant: new generations of editors are systematically replacing older generations of editors.
4. The average volume contributed per editor in the different contribution classes has remained constant over the past years: High volume editors are making about the same proportions of total number of edits ~80% of edits are done by individuals who make >100 edits / month
5.In addition, the total megabyte contributions across namespaces has remained relatively constant, with slight fluxes on the user talk pages: ~80MB contributed per month ~50% in the main namespace ("0 namespace") ~30% in the user-talk namespace ("3 namespace") There is a spike on the ammount of Kb added to user talk pages in August 2006.

Hypotheses

H1. The results (2) and (4) may actually be an evidence of decline instead of consistency. Tools for semiautomatic edit have become more popular on wiki.pt and templates are larger and more frequently used.

H2. This spike may be due to several factors: 1) an increase in the number of users editing user talk pages; 2)an increase in the average number of edits/user; or 3) an increase in the average number of bytes per edit.

Next steps

1. Analyse the evolution of the percent of semi-automatic edits (AWG, Huggle, fast-buttons, etc.) 2. Analyse of ammount of edits which consists of a simple insertion of maintenance template and the impact of this kind of edits in order to verify H1.
2. Make a list of all editors who have increased their contributions to user talk pages in mid 2006. Analyse the evolution of the number of edits in user talk pages. Filter new page creation out from the data (sending welcoming message in the period might might have caused the spike).
3. Analyze the rate of edits by non-autoconfirmed editors over time.

Further information

See Editor Trends research for more detailed charts and graphs.

See also

• w:pt:Wikipédia:Central de pesquisas/Tendências e comportamento de editores/Tendências gerais de editores Page on Portuguese