Research:Teahouse/Metrics/Archive

This research page is kept for historical interest. Any policies mentioned may be obsolete. Please visit the research homepage for current research-related contents and discussions. You can review the most recent Teahouse metrics report at Research:Teahouse/Metrics.

August Metrics

Cumulative activity metrics for the period February 27th through August 26th are presented below. The metrics report from the pilot period is available here.

Highlights

• 741 new editors have participated in Teahouse since February 27th
• 50% more new editors are participating every week since automated invites began. Q&A board participation is up by 27%, and profile-creation by more than 50%
• 45% more hosts are participating each week
• The Q&A board is as lively and interactive as ever. Each question receives around 3 answers, and are answered within about 30 minutes. Over 50% of guests participate in the discussion around the question they asked.

Participation :: overview

The Teahouse is busier than it's ever been. Although participation by new editors dropped off somewhat in the ~2 months following the end of the pilot period on May 26th, participation rebounded in mid-late July and has since increased substantially. Since July 23rd, an average of 46 new editors have participated per week, an increase of 53% over the pilot period. Two likely factors contributing to this increase are:

• hard work by Teahouse hosts, particularly in the quality of help they provide and their commitment to new editor outreach
• the implementation of several automated outreach features: automatic invitations of all new editors listed on the invitee reports, and new links to Teahouse in experimental deployments such as the New pages feed and AFT-5.

New editors participating per week, 2/27 - 8/26/2012

Overall participation
total editors (on any WP:Teahouse/* page)	1250
total hosts	46
per week	19
joined & participated since pilot	12
total new editors (< 100 edits at first visit)	741
per week
during pilot	30
since 7/23	46
percent increase	53%
overall	32.6

Participation :: Q&A board

New editor participation in the Q&A board has risen sharply since the implementation of automatic invites. Since July 23rd, the average number of questions asked has increased 29% over the pilot period. The difference is even more stark in comparison to the three weeks immediately prior to automatic invitation (7.3 questions per day versus 4.8).

The Q&A board is highly interactive. 53% of questioners post a response (usually a follow up question, or a simple 'thank you') to the thread they started, and 22% of guests have asked more than one question. Despite the recent increase in questions per day, Teahouse host have maintained a high quality of service. Questions are still usually answered in about 30 minutes, and each question receives an average of 3 responses (not including any responses by the original questioner). The number of newcomers who respond to someone else's question remains low, at about 11%.

Questions per week, 2/27 - 8/26/2012

Teahouse/Questions
total questions	1081
average time to first response	1:06 hours
median time to first response	32 minutes
% of guests who respond to their own question	53%
questions per guest	1.6
responses per question	3
responses by new editors	10
per day
during pilot	5.6
since 7/23	7.3
overall	6
per week
during pilot	39.5
since 7/23	51
percent increase	29%
overall	41.5

Participation :: Guests page

Guest profile creation has increased markedly since 7/23, up 53% per week from the pilot period. The implementation of automatic invites seems to have contributed to the number of new editors who introduce themselves at the Teahouse, even if they don't have an immediate question to ask.

Profiles by new editors per week, 2/27 - 8/26/2012

Teahouse/Guests
total new editor profiles	274
per week
during pilot	10.8
since 7/23	16.4
percent increase	53%
overall	10.1

Retention :: Visitors vs. non-visitors

In order to determine whether participating in the Teahouse has a positive effect on an editor's likelihood of continuing to edit Wikipedia and on their level of editing activity, we analyzed the editing behaviors of a sample of editors who were invited to the Teahouse during the pilot period, identified through either the Invitee report or the Articles for Creation process. Roughly half of these editors subsequently visited the Teahouse, the other half did not. To control for the possibility that new editors who did not visit had simply not seen the invitation, we excluded from our sample those who did not make at least one edit to Wikipedia after the date of invitation.*

Our main findings from this analysis are highlighted below.

• Teahouse guests made more edits on average. (216.7 versus 74.4) than editors who were invited to the Teahouse, but did not visit.
• Teahouse guests also subsequently edited more articles than invited non-visitors, even after controlling for whether the non-visitors had made at least 1 edit the day after receiving the invitation.
• Teahouse guests made more edits to talk namespaces. A higher proportion of guest edits were to talk namespaces (user_talk, Wikipedia_talk, article_talk): 35% on average for Teahouse visitors, versus 16% for non-visitors.

Group	sample size	total edits	articles edited	% talk namespace edits
Visitors	153	216.7	66	35%
Invited non-visitors	164	74.4	25	16%

* This sample differs somewhat from the sample used in our previous analysis. Specifically, we have removed the 'Control A' group from this analysis, due to the difficulty of making meaningful comparison between editors who were intentionally selected by Teahouse hosts as good candidates for invitation (invitees) and a random sample of highly active new editors. Our previous findings showed that both invitees and invited visitors showed greater retention and higher productivity than this group, so we are not concerned that excluding this sample invalidates our results.

July Metrics

Basic activity metrics for the month of July 2012 are presented below.

Highlights

• questions per week has increased slightly, up to 43 per week from 36 in June
• 12 new hosts joined the Teahouse in July, up from 4 new hosts in June
• both questions and profiles increase noticeably after 7/23. Possible result of automated invites
• most other activity measures are roughly equivalent to the numbers for June

Q&A

Overall participation in the Q&A board is in line with previous months, resulting in an average of 5.8 questions per day. However, since the implementation of automatic invites on July 24th, the average number of questions per day has increased to 8.4, compared with an average of 4.8 for the period July 1 - 23.

WP:Teahouse/Questions	#	%
total participants	215
total hosts	23	10.70%
total guests	192	89.30%
guests - new editors (< 100 edits)	80	41.67%
guests - veteran editors (> 100 edits)	82	42.71%
guests - IP addresses	30	15.63%
hosts participating per week	13
guests participating per week	48
total questions	181
questions from new editors	77	42.54%
questions from veteran editors	62	34.25%
questions from IP addresses	30	16.57%
mean time to first response	1:02 hours
median response time	28 minutes
mean questions per guest	1.4
mean responses per question	2.6
responses by new editors	10
questions per week	43
questions per day	5.8

Guests page

Guest profile creation was slow for the first three weeks of July. However, the implementation of automatic invites seems to have contributed to a jump in the number of guests who create profiles. Since July 24th, when HostBot began sending out automated invitations to between 50 and 70 every day, 15 new editors have created profiles on the Guests page, a 300% rate increase from the weeks prior.

WP:Teahouse/Guests	#
profiles per week	7
total new profiles created	30

April 24th metrics report

Activity Metrics

This section contains data related to activity on WP:Teahouse/Questions and WP:Teahouse/Guests, as well as activities related to inviting new editors to Teahouse. All data reported in this section was gathered between 2/27 and 4/24/2012.

Visitors

number of new editors visiting Teahouse/Questions for the first time per week, through 4/22/2012

number of new editors visiting Teahouse/Guests for the first time per week, through 4/22/2012

Teahouse receives most of its visitors through direct invitation. Visitors who have not received a direct invitation seem to be more likely to ask a question on Teahouse/Questions than to create an intro box on the Teahouse/Guests page. For this analysis, a "new editor visitor" is defined as a user who either created their account in 2012 or who had made fewer than 100 edits under that account at the time they edited Teahouse/Questions or Teahouse/Guests.

Teahouse/Questions
new editor visitors (invited)	136
new editor visitors (not invited)	57
total new editor visitors	193

Teahouse/Guests
new editor visitors (invited)	139
new editor visitors (not invited)	13
total new editor visitors	152

Questions

questions per week on Teahouse/Questions through 4/22/2012

the types of questions asked on WP:Teahouse/Questions and WP:Help_desk during February and March 2012. Coding scheme adapted from here

Question summary

Overall, the Teahouse has received an average of about 6 questions per day since February 27th, although this number varies significantly day-by-day and week-by-week, and has increased notably in recent weeks. It is common, but not the norm, for Teahouse visitors to ask more than one question. Questions are answered rapidly, with the average response time of about 1.5 hours and a median response time of half an hour.

Question summary
total questions	334
average questions per user*	1.5
% editors who asked more than one question*	22%
average questions per week	41.75
Time between question and first response
average response time	1:28:06
median response time	0:30:27

* excludes questions asked by Teahouse hosts, WMF staff members and 1 disruptive editor

Question types

A content analysis of 100 questions each from Teahouse/Questions and Help Desk was conducted by a member of the research team. This analysis, which compared the types of questions asked in these two help forums over the same time period, suggests several intriguing differences between the help needs of new editors and the help needs of the general Wikipedia population:

• Teahouse guests asked more questions about rules of editing (such as questions about reliability of sources, notability and conflict of interest)
• Teahouse guests asked more (both technical and non-technical) questions about adding sources in general
• Teahouse guests asked fewer technical questions (such as how to create a template, or move a page) in general
• Teahouse guests asked more questions related to finding work to do, such as identifying articles in need of editing or WikiProjects looking for new members

Q&A page activity by host

This table contains the number of edits made to Teahouse/Questions by editors who have identified themselves as Teahouse hosts. Number of edits is a proxy for number of answers to questions. However, these numbers will be slightly skewed for editors who have also made changes to the layout of the Q&A page. For instance, the number of apparent "answers" by users Jtmorgan, Heatherawalls and Writ Keeper may be slightly inflated for this reason.

Host name	# revisions to Teahouse/Questions
Writ Keeper	164
SarahStierch	131
Heatherawalls	127
Nolelover	92
Charlesdrakew	85
Nthep	71
Bilby	51
Trevj	51
Jayron32	37
Benzband	34
McDoobAU93	33
Rosiestep	23
Jtmorgan	22
Chicocvenancio	20
ItsZippy	18
Rcsprinter123	15
Nathan2055	10
AbigailAbernathy	10
Banaticus	8
Filceolaire	8
Cindamuse	7
Ocaasi	5
Bill william compton	5
Steven Zhang	5
Hallows AG	5
ReelAngelGirl	4
Rosalina2427	4
Debastein	4
Mailer diablo	4
Jedd Raynier	3
Tony1	2

Guest introductions

Intro summary
total guest intro boxes created	172
average intros created per week	21.5

Invitations to new editors

Invitees by source

invitee identified through	# invite templates sent	# invitees who visited Teahouse (Guests page, Q&A, or both)	% invitees who visited Teahouse	# who edited /Questions	# who edited /Guests
New editor contrib	2205	97	4.40%	47	64
Database report	1079	44	4.08%	27	26
unknown	1015	28	2.76%	18	15
Global ed	579	6	1.04%	2	4
AfC	434	30	6.91%	19	14
Feedback dash	357	19	5.32%	13	10
Other	317	15	4.73%	12	8
NPP	89	3	3.37%	2	2
Help desk	57	3	5.26%	1	3
India Education Program	15	0	0.00%	0	0
Watchlist	10	1	10.00%	1	1
WP Feminism	10	3	30.00%	1	2

Templated invites sent by host

host name	invites sent
SarahStierch	2351
Rosiestep	2130
unknown	1012
Charlesdrakew	210
HeatherWalls	205
Ocaasi	115
Nolelover	47
Trevj	47
ItsZippy	35
ReelAngelGirl	35
Nthep	34
Jayron32	33
Tony	24
Rosalina2427	22
Bilby	18
Debastein	17
Benzband	14
Worm That Turned	12
Bill william compton	7
McDoobAU93	6
Chicocvenancio	3
Mlm42	3
Jtmorgan	2
Lukep913	2
Writ Keeper	2
Cindy	1
Hallows AG	1
JoeGazz	1
Mono	1
Puffin	1
Shearonik	1

Impact of email invites

We are interested in determining whether new editors who receive an email invite in addition to an invite template are more likely to ask a question or create an intro box at the Teahouse. In order to test this, we collected a sample of editors who were invited through the Teahouse invitee database reports, the new editor contrib filter or the feedback dashboard. We find that editors who received an email invite are roughly twice as likely to show up at Teahouse than editors who only received an invite template on their talk page.

total invitees	3284
invitees emailed	720
invitees not emailed	2562
# invitees who showed up	141
template + email invite, showed up	51
template only invite, showed up	90
% emailed invitees who showed up	7.08%
% not emailed invitees who showed up	3.51%

Engagement and retention metrics

In order to begin to understand whether visiting the Teahouse has a positive impact on subsequent editing behaviors or editor retention, we analyzed the outcomes for three groups of editors in three different 'conditions'--two different control groups and an experimental group--drawn from editors who joined between mid-February and mid-April 2012.

• Control A: 75 new editors who met the requirements to be included on the Teahouse invitee report but whose usernames were not included on that report, who were not invited through any other forum, and who did not find their way to the Teahouse on their own.
• Control B: 74 new editors who were invited through the feedback dashboard, the Teahouse invitee reports and the new editor contribs filter, but did not ask a question on the Teahouse Q&A page or create an introduction box on the Teahouse/Guests page.
• Experimental: 75 new editors who were invited through the feedback dashboard, the Teahouse invitee reports and the new editor contribs filter and who did edit the Teahouse/Questions and/or Teahouse/Guests pages.

Group outcomes

Amount of content in the article namespace content that survived in significant bytes (no spaces) as of 4/27/2012, for editors who visited WP:Teahouse vs non-visitors.

Amount of content in the article namespace that survived in significant bytes (no spaces) as of 4/27/2012, for editors who visited WP:Teahouse vs non-visitors. Average within experimental group.

Overview

The table below displays aggregate data related to subsequent editing activity by members of the three different experimental groups. These measures were generated using a custom-built analytics platform used by the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Development department in order to assess the impact of outreach initiatives on subsequent editing behavior and editor retention. We use these measures to analyze whether Teahouse visitors engage in certain positive editing activities, such as whether they edit the article namespace, how many articles they edit, and whether their edits persist over time or are subsequently reverted or deleted.

Teahouse visitors (Experimental group) are more likely to edit the article namespace after being invited, and show a higher average number of edits to the article namespace, a larger volume of article namespace contribution, and a higher degree of edit persistence than either of the control groups.

Editors who receive a Teahouse invite template but do not subsequently visit the Teahouse (Control B) exhibit higher performance than Control A, but still do not edit as actively or productively as the Experimental group. This is likely to be an artifact of an expected "invitation bias" on the part of Teahouse hosts, which is discussed further in the next section.

A table key with detailed descriptions of each measure is provided below.

GroupID	Editors with >0 NS0 edits	Avg Global Edits	avg bytes added (by editor)	avg bytes survived (by editor)	articles created/edited
Control A	50	39	4506	868	451
Control B	61	114	16723	4847	1030
Experimental	74	240	65250	22629	4930

Table Key

• Editors with >0 NS0 edits: editors in this sample who made at least one edit to the article namespace after their invite date*.
• Avg Global Edits: the average number of global edits, per editor
• avg bytes added (by editor): the average number of bytes added per group, post-invite
• avg bytes survived (by editor): the average number of bytes added which had not been reverted or deleted at the time the analysis was run
• articles edited: total number of different article namespace pages edited (or created) by group members, post-invite

Level of recent activity

Overview

In order to determine whether Teahouse visitors were active at a higher rate than non-visitors, we measured how many members of each group had made at least one edit to any namespace between April 20th and April 27th. Each of our three sample groups contained editors who were invited (or, in the case of Control A, met the criteria for invitation) between February 27th and April 10th, the minimum time elapsed time between invitation and the time period in which we analyzed follow-up activity was 10 days. The invitation date distributions between the three groups was similar.

Our findings for this round of analysis are comparable to the proportions we found last time around. As expected, invitees who did not visit Teahouse (Control B) are still active at a higher rate than Control A (12% versus 5%). This is likely the result of an expected selection bias among Teahouse hosts: they (appropriately) tend to invite new editors who show promise, and avoid inviting new editors who show obvious tendencies towards vandalism or who they judge to be less engaged--in other words, Teahouse hosts may avoid inviting new editors who they believe are likely to be blocked, or whose editing behavior in their first few days otherwise indicates that they may be unlikely to stick around. This selection bias would likely result in the phenomenon seen below: the editors from Control B continue to be active at a higher rate than editors from control group A, which consists a random, unscreened sample of new editors from the same sources.

However, new editors who were invited and who subsequently visited the Teahouse (Experimental group) were much more likely to remain active weeks later than Control B (28% versus 12%), consistent with our previous analysis. Although our sample is still relatively small and more nuanced retention measures are still needed, this week's confirmatory findings (coupled with the other subsequent editing activity data presented directly above) provides additional evidence that Teahouse is having a positive impact on retention by:

• encouraging sustained contribution from editors who would otherwise have stopped editing, and
• providing key support infrastructure for 'high quality' newcomers who are already intent on sticking around, but who face many social and technical challenges as they integrate themselves into the community.

	total editors in sample	# who made at least 1 edit between 4/20 and 4/27	% who made at least 1 edit between 4/20 and 4/27
Control A	75	4	5%
Control B	74	9	12%
Experimental	75	21	28%

April 2nd metrics report

We report a variety of data related to the activity on WP:Teahouse, the experience of new editors who participated, and the impact of participation on editor retention. All data below refer to on-wiki activity that took place between 2/27/2012 and 4/2/2012. Additional analyses and updates to these existing analyses will be posted here in late April or early May, as the Teahouse pilot wraps up.

Activity Metrics

In this section we report metrics related to activity on WP:Teahouse and its sub-pages, as well as activities related to identifying and inviting new editors to Teahouse. All data reported in this section was gathered between 2/27 and 4/2/2012.

Overview

• Overall, we show a steady level of activity on Teahouse/Questions (the q & a board) and Teahouse/Guests (the guests intro page).
• More than half (61%) of new editors who ask a question on the q & a board return to thank the answering host, ask for followup or clarification, or ask an additional question (26%).
• Most new editors are identified through a few major sources: the Teahouse invitee reports, the new editor contribs filter and the feedback dashboard. Of these, the invitee reports and the feedback dashboard demonstrate a slightly higher 'hit rate', but in general hit rate is fairly low, hovering between 3% and 6% for these three sources through the pilot period so far.

number of newbies visiting Teahouse/Guests for the first time, per week

total revisions to Teahouse/Questions per day

number of newbies visiting Teahouse/Questions for the first time, per week

questions per day on Teahouse/Questions

total revs per day to Teahouse/Guests

Visitor Summary

The total number of new editors who visited WP:Teahouse between 2/27 and 4/2. All invitees who visited are counted. Editors who were not invited and whose accounts were > 1 month old or who had > 100 edits at the time of their visit are not counted, which may lead to under-reporting.

Teahouse/Guests
newbie visitors who were invited	87
newbie visitors who were not invited	7
total newbie visitors	94
Teahouse/Questions
newbie visitors who were invited	79
newbie visitors who were not invited	43
total newbie visitors	122
total questions asked	199
total unique newbie visitors to Teahouse (either asked a question or made a guest intro)	164

Repeat Visitors

Many new editors visited Teahouse more than once. Hosts use a special Talkback template to let questioners know that their question has been answered, which increases the possibility that a questioner will return to Teahouse. Many visitors also returned to ask another question.

average number of visits	2.950819672
num returning visitors	74
% returning visitors	61%
average questions per visitors	1.55
visitors who asked multiple questions	32
% vistors who asked multiple questions	26%

Invitees by source

Invitees and invited visitors to WP:Teahouse listed by where they were found. "unknown" means that an invite template was transcluded on the new editors talk page, but their name was not recorded in the invite tracking spreadsheet. "Other" indicates that the inviting host specified "Other" as the invite location in the invite tracking spreadsheet.

invited through	number of invites sent	invited visitors to WP:Teahouse (/Guests, /Questions, or both)	% invitees who visited
New editor contrib	1938	79	4%
Database report	547	26	5%
Global ed	547	2	0%
Feedback dash	242	11	5%
unknown	188	10	5%
Other	127	14	11%
NPP	89	2	2%
AfC help desk	35	0	0%
Help desk	16	1	6%
India Education Program	15	0	0%
WP Feminism	10	1	10%
Event	8	1	13%
Meetup	7	0	0%
Watchlist	6	0	0%
Prior interaction	4	0	0%
OTRS	4	0	0%
Recent changes	2	0	0%
WP project signup	2	0	0%
Article space	2	0	0%
AfC	2	0	0%
AFC help desk	1	0	0%
Chzz\'s talk page	1	0	0%
Mentor program	1	0	0%
WikiProject	1	0	0%
Watchlist	1	1	100%
total	3796	148

Invitees by host

Total invite templates transcluded since 2/27, by inviting host. "unknown" means that an invite template was transcluded on the new editors talk page, but the invite was not recorded in the invite tracking spreadsheet.

host name	invites sent
Rosiestep	1580
SarahStierch	1448
unknown	185
Charlesdrakew	162
Ocaasi	110
Trevj	45
Nolelover	45
ItsZippy	35
Jayron32	31
ReelAngelGirl	23
Rosalina2427	19
Bilby	18
Nthep	17
Debastein	17
Tony1	13
Worm That Turned	11
Tony	11
Bill william compton	7
McDoobAU93	6
Chicocvenancio	3
Mlm42	3
Writ Keeper	2
Lukep913	2
Mono	1
Cindy	1
Worm TT	1

Engagement Metrics

Below we present a selection of questions and answers drawn from a survey of ~1500 Teahouse invitees and (new editor) visitors between February 27th and March 15th. This survey was active between 3/20 and 4/2/2012. We received a total of 160 responses (including partially complete surveys) and 124 completed responses.

Overview

• Satisfaction with the Teahouse Q&A board and Guests' page were overwhelmingly positive (86%/78% 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied')
• Overall satisfaction with Teahouse was roughly two-thirds 'neutral' and one-third 'positive', with very little 'negative' experience reported
• respondents especially appreciated the speed with which questions were answered, and the welcoming and helpful attitude of the answering hosts
• roughly 27% of respondents were female, noticeably higher than the average proportion for en.wiki

Q&A page satisfaction

Prompt: How satisfied were you with the quality of the answer you received at Teahouse/Questions?

#	Answer	Response	%
1	Very Dissatisfied	1	3%
2	Dissatisfied	2	6%
3	Neutral	2	6%
4	Satisfied	14	40%
5	Very Satisfied	16	46%
	Total	35	100%

Guests page satisfaction

Prompt: How satisfied were you with the experience of creating your guest page introduction?

#	Answer	Response	%
1	Very Dissatisfied	1	5%
2	Dissatisfied	0	0%
3	Neutral	6	27%
4	Satisfied	11	50%
5	Very Satisfied	4	18%
	Total	22	100%

Overall satisfaction

Prompt: How satisfied were you with your overall experience on Teahouse?

#	Answer	Response	%
1	Very Dissatisfied	3	2%
2	Dissatisfied	2	2%
3	Neutral	82	63%
4	Satisfied	24	18%
5	Very Satisfied	19	15%
	Total	130	100%

Negative experience with Teahouse

Prompt: Was there anything in particular you disliked about your Teahouse experience? Tell us about it.

Text Response

I think an invitation to edit would have been nice; but, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an invitation to social networking seems a bit weird.

didn\'t help me with what i wanted to do

Having my question ignored. Getting told, by a \"host,\" that my comments, due to extreme frustration with bad information on Wikipedia, were \"mean.\"

Positive experience with Teahouse

Prompt: Was there anything in particular you liked about your Teahouse experience? Tell us about it.

Text Response

Design

It was welcoming to us as new members of Wikipedia.

Most of the help I received was useful.

It\'s nice to have a way like this to have my questions answered

it was far more social and less confrontational than anywhere else on Wikipedia

The opinionated information may sometimes be political, although, it makes a great advantage to apply information and medicine to the media world.

The idea is great

Quick feedback.

How friendly and helpful people are on helping you out.

I like the name, and I really like that the language is inviting. It is unlike many of the \"Help\" pages that read more like a technical document with the occasional \"we\'re here to help each other\" message. Teahouse overall is very inviting and proves to be quite useful.

Promptitude in my (two) questions being answered.

The quick solution to my problem was great.

Very helpful.

The response to my question really helped!

A good way of making me feel welcome on joining the site

It is nice that this exists. It was very nice and interesting to see the work that the Teahouse host had done in Wikipedia :)

Teahouse experience... That wasn\'t much, except that I had a good time introducing myself :) The only other thing that I want to mention is that I don\'t really know how to upload an avatar. I could have copied one from the list on the introduction page, but I want my own photo... so I ended up having no avatars instead, which is pretty sad. :(

I got my question answered even though it was one I should have been able to figure out myself.

nothing

I really liked how it was a new project in shot and was helping newcomers on Wikipedia

the answers are very understanding

I was just a newcomer in Teahouse and kind of an inexperienced guest

While I was nervous about posting a question, the open and friendly nature of the responses I received helped make me feel more comfortable with seeking help from others in Wikipedia.

The response was almost immediate and very kind. I feel the Teahouse is a great place for new Wikipedians to get orientations

The teahouse was a warming experience that got me over my fear of making major edits. Everyone in the tea house seemed to be very understanding and I don\' t think I noticed any kind of disrespect or mean responses at all like a lot of us were afraid of getting when joining Wikipedia and editing. Thanks!

On-wiki activities

Prompt: What are some of the things are you are excited about doing on Wikipedia?

Text Response

My motivation is contribute for increment of free information to all

Getting knowledge and reliable knowledge :)

Translate articles into Spanish.

Contributing to certain articles of interest to me.

question needs rephrasing, could be read in several ways

Creating new articles, editing articles in topics that are of interest to me.

Editing, reading and writing articles

Looking forward to help increase quality of articles on Football, particularly USA, Canada, Greece and Spanish-speaking countries

Adding to knowledge, and correcting erroneous or unbalanced articles

Editing articles, reading articles, reading historical articles.

don\'t know, building an encyclopedia

Editing articles. Maybe not excited, more interested.

getting good grades

helping make articles better!

not sure

The sandbox = Independence. Showing the truth and countervandalism identity to keep track on many anonymous IP users while in disguise.

Editing, and contributing to what I think is one of the best inventions of 21st century.

Leaving.

Being able to contribute my knowledge to others

Simply to help have all knwledge in one palce, for free.

Centralizing all the world\'s knowledge.

editing to make the site better for all who use it

Editing and improving articles.

(should it be \"What are some things you are...Wikipedia?\") I\'m excited about creating new articles!!! I\'ve already created one, and I\'m looking forward to editing ones that are already here. I\'ve even fixed a couple of links on established pages. I\'m also excited to be apart of WikiProject Cats (because I love them... even though I can\'t hug \'em all).

contributing, wherever I can; there seem to be areas I could help expand on once I\'m more familiar with the commons.

The opportunity to edit in order to leave an existing article more accurate and interesting than one found it; to put into public domain what you already knew and had citation for; and to right inaccuracies when one sees them

writing articles, contributing

Because so many people use Wikipedia as a source of information, I am excited about promoting neutrality and fact-based claims that address a variety of topics.

Developing pages with other users.

I look forward to adding more matierial when I have more time to do it.

Just helping to contribute to the huge collected knowldege and doing my bit where needed.

Connecting certain interests to the information all ready out there, but not linked.

^Terrible grammar to this question! Correcting things like this is always nice :)

editing

Adding accurate information and updates.

Copyediting. Maybe a bit of article editing (mostly developing underdeveloped articles that relate to my coursework).

I enjoy writing and I hope some of my inputs will be useful to future readers. I\'d like to help with site maintenance in due course as time allows and I learn more

Animal biology. Lots of topics that need work. Human biology much more thoroughly treated.

Editing pages to spread knowledge

Sharing research

EDITTING! (And by doing so, I won\'t need to go shopping with my mom! :D)

Editing and reading about new articles

I am a pretty casual editor. I just happened across some information that I knew was incorrect and corrected it.

the good feeling of expressing on a an prestigious as also genuinely intellectual forum

reviewing/edite content on U.S. history

Someday beating ClueBot NG to the punch. No, but actually I am researching for an article.

Not sure I understand the question which is semantically quite odd, but I like to add paragraphs to Wikipedia to share my (little) knowledge I have about some limited subjects... I do so in Dutch, French and English

Adding new pages for people who are notable but who don\'t have pages yet

Editing and using it to kill spare time

meeting people

creating pages

Finding out new things through research, especially on subjects I am passionate about.

I was happy.

Making new articles that aren\'t in here and learning Wikicode

Getting the information right.

I was excited to get my own userpage and have other editors respond to me and help build and give away a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

getting answer to my question on the talk page of \"Bill Adler\"

Clearing facts up and making links between pages.

Actually, I have been impressed with Wikipedia since I started researching here.

editing and giving reliable citations

I like posting articles

I\'m excited to translate a few pages and help fill in the blanks in information on other language Wikipedias.

i would like to add photo\'s to my page but they were not accepted and I don\'t know why

Nothing

Improving the quality of the content of topics of which I am familiar with; create new articles

editting

I enjoy just surfing around, and if something catches my fancy I see if I can expand on it.

Just editing articles but id like to translate japanese

promoting facts and building a library representative of all people

Improving info on subjects of my research

I am interested in adding information in areas where I have an interest and have something to contribute. I try to correct errors of grammar and usage whenever I encounter them. In technical articles (current computer technology, e.g.) I find that while the technical material presented seems to be up to date, the writing tends to have more errors, something that does not surprise me.

I intend to use Wikipedia to improve my own writing, and to be able to proofread better.

Aspiring to Inspire before I Expire

Just editing in general. I didn\'t realize how much I liked editing.

Reading and correcting articles

Reading history, geography

New features

Prompt: Teahouse is still under development, and we're planning to add new features soon. Which of the features below would be most helpful to you? (select all that apply)

#	Answer	Response	%
1	Live Chat with Teahouse hosts	55	52%
2	Live Chat with other Teahouse guests	35	33%
3	A list of Wikiprojects that are looking for new members.	74	70%
4	Links to other \'Help\' resources, such as tutorials, videos, and how-to pages.	67	64%
5	More/better host and guest profiles	26	25%
6	Other (please suggest new features below, or use this space to elaborate on ideas you\'ve checked in the list above)	18	17%

Other (please suggest new features below, or use this space to elaborate on ideas you\'ve checked in the list above)

Online Jobs for the needy ones and Competitions for all the Users.

disregard the idea of another WP:HD

None. I\'m not really interested in socializing with Wikipedia editors using Wikipedia as a social hango-out.

The ability to become a recognised expert on particular subject matter

Teahouse should be put in a more obvious place on wikipedia.

Groups within groups? I think that\'s where the Wikiprojects come in but it would be nice to have subgroups for lady librarians or catlovers or music editors.

I like the idea of a live chat, but just wanted to add that it might make more since than the Q&A page. This way, editors can receive more immediate feedback.

I would LOVE a list of wikiprojects looking for new members. A lot of the ones I considered joining/joined are pretty much dead, and I don\'t know which other ones to look at.

Cool ways you can customize your user page. I have learned a lot from these.

They all sound pretty good to me. I doubt I will be a frequent flyer so don\'t give my opinion too much weight.

I think the experience is too fresh for me to be ablle to apply my mind

Not quite interested.

Tea house should have a place where editors cool off and talk about there day helping (like \"the waste bucket\" of Wikipedia)

Time is an issue for me, so I will need to withold this response for now.

Maybe a way to get help/answers to questions regarding info posted on particular wikipedia page. For example, as a new member, I\'m not good at editing, but I know of several sites that have false info that needs to be changed. Info I have can be verified.

Above all, the Wikiprojects list. Too many projects make it unclear or difficult to figure out just how active or inactive they may be.

Easier interface (using a format similar of that of social media websites) to interact with other members

At the moment I do not have anything to contribute to Teahouse, but I\'m hoping in the future that when I make contributions to an article that I will be able to find someone (through Teahouse) who will take note of my changes and give me a critique.

Participant gender

Prompt: Teahouse is intended to be a friendly, supportive environment for all new Wikipedians, but we make a special effort to welcome female editors, who are underrepresented within the Wikipedia community. If you're comfortable telling us, what is your gender?

#	Answer	Response	%
1	I am female	33	27%
2	I am male	78	64%
3	I\'d rather not say	10	8%
	Total	121	100%

Retention Metrics

Although Teahouse has only been live for a little over a month, we do have some preliminary data addressing the question of whether Teahouse visitors tend to continue editing Wikipedia at a higher rate than editors who did not visit Teahouse. The table below lists three groups of editors who share the following characteristics:

• the created a user account between 2/26 and 3/17
• they made at least 10 edits within their first 24 hours
• they were not blocked from editing before their 10th edit

Some of these editors ("invited") were presented as 'potential invitees' on the Teahouse invitees database report, and were subsequently invited by Teahouse hosts via a talk page invite template, an email, or both. Of these, a small number ("visited" group) subsequently visited the Teahouse. A third group ("control") met the criteria for invitation, but were excluded from the invitees database report and thus Teahouse hosts were not given the opportunity to invite them.

Overview

In order to determine whether Teahouse visitors were active at a higher rate than non-visitors, we measured how many members of each group had made at least one edit between March 26th and April 2nd. As expected, "invited" visitors were active at a higher rate than the control group (12% versus 7%). This is likely the result of a selection bias among Teahouse hosts: they (appropriately) tend to invite new editors who show promise, and avoid inviting new editors who show obvious tendencies towards vandalism or who don't seem as engaged--in other words, they may avoid inviting new editors who are likely to be blocked, or who are more likely to leave, resulting in a higher proportion of subsequently active editors than the control group, which includes a wider variety of new editors.

However, new editors who were invited and who visited the Teahouse were much more likely to remain active weeks later than even their "invited" fellows (38% versus 12%). Although these numbers are small, and there may be additional selection biases at work, this is an early encouraging sign that Teahouse may be drawing editors in who would otherwise leave sooner and also providing key support infrastructure for 'high quality' newcomers who are already intent on sticking around, but who face many social and technical challenges as they integrate themselves into the community.

group	total	number active in past week	% active in past week
control - met criteria for invitation, but not listed on database reports page	318	21	7%
invited - listed on db report (through 3/17)	266	33	12%
visited - Teahouse after db report invite	13	5	38%

March 25th Report

the number of templated invitations sent out, per day, by Teahouse hosts during the first month of the WP:Teahouse pilot

the number of revisions, per day, to WP:Teahouse/Guests during the first month of the WP:Teahouse pilot

the number of revisions, per day, to WP:Teahouse/Questions during the first month of the WP:Teahouse pilot

Invitations by host

As usual, Rosiestep and SarahStierch lead the pack, invite-wise. Great work, you two!

The "unknown host" user here is intended to account for a large number of invite templates which were found through an API query, but which had not been included on the invite tracking spreadsheet.

host	number of invites sent
Rosiestep	1403
SarahStierch	781
Charlesdrakew	150
unknown_host	105
Ocaasi	64
Trevj	45
Nolelover	36
ItsZippy	35
Jayron32	31
ReelAngelGirl	23
Rosalina2427	19
Bilby	18
Debastein	16
Tony	11
Worm That Turned	8
Tony1	7
Bill william compton	7
McDoobAU93	6
Nthep	4
Mlm42	3
Lukep913	2
Cindy	1
Mono	1
total invitees	2776

Invitations by source

These are the places hosts are looking to find new users to invite. Since the database reports have been out of commission off and on for the last week or so(!), there have been relatively fewer newbies invited through that channel. However, database reports, new editor contribs and feedback dashboard remain the richest sources of newbies: new editors recruited from the feedback dashboard, the database reports and the new editor contribs page continue to show up at the Teahouse at the highest rates. Keep watching these sources!

source	number attendees	hit rate (attendees/total invitees)
Feedback Dash	9	7%
Database Report	16	5%
New editor contrib	67	4%

As above, "unknown" in the table below accounts for a large number of invite templates which were found through an API query, but which had not been included on the invite tracking spreadsheet.

invite source	number of invites sent
New editor contrib	1715
Database Report	330
Feedback Dash	189
Global Ed	128
unknown	105
NPP	89
Global ed	56
Other	53
AfC help desk	27
Global Ed Collab	22
India Education Program	15
WP Feminism	8
Event	8
Meetup	7
Watchlist	6
OTRS	4
Prior interaction	4
Recent changes	2
WP project signup	2
Chzz's talk page	1
Mentor program	1
WikiProject	1

Overview of attendees

Total attendees, and another note on emailing

The following table summarizes the number of invited guests to WP:Teahouse.

As you can see from this table, emailing guests remains an effective strategy for getting them to show up. Guests who are emailed are significantly more likely to subsequently introduce themselves or ask a question than one who is not. Keep emailing!

invited guests who showed up (Q&A, Guests page, or both)	117
invited guests who showed up (where emailed status is known)	111
invited guests (where emailed status is known)	2671
invitees who were not emailed	2188
invitees who were emailed	588
attendees (invitees who showed up) who were emailed	39
invitees who were emailed, but didn\'t show up	549
% Teahouse invitees who were emailed	22%
% Teahouse attendees who were emailed	35%

Newbies who participated in WP:Teahouse

Because it's not easy to discern whether someone editing Teahouse pages is in fact a new user (as opposed to, say, a passing Wikipedian or an unofficial 'host'), editors were counted as 'newbies' if they they met one of the following two conditions:

1. their account was less than 1 month old at the time they edited a Teahouse page, or
2. they had fewer than 100 edits to their username at the time they edited a Teahouse page

Summary: A good number of Q&A participants are finding the Teahouse without being explicitly invited (or at least those invites aren't being recorded as such). However, new users appear to be much less comfortable introducing themselves on the 'guests' page when they have not been explicitly invited to Teahouse. This suggests to me that the 'welcoming' aspect of explicit invites puts guests more at ease, and may increase the perception that they are part of a community.

total questions asked	154
invited q&a participants	46
other newbie q&a participants (not explicitly invited)	46
total newbies on q&a	105
'other' Teahouse/Questions participants*	103
invited Teahouse/Guests participants	68
Teahouse/Guests participants - not invited	8
total newbies on Teahouse/Guests	76

* This 'other' category is a catchall for a bunch of different kinds of editors, from those who are performing 'host' duties but have not included themselves on the Teahouse hosts' list,r to relative newbies who were not explicitly invited but found the Teahouse and asked ask a question, to many other Wikipedians of all levels of experience who dropped by to ask or to answer a question.

March 12th report

Basic stats - this week

40 new editors edited the Teahouse Q&A page this week. Invitees who received emails were about twice as likely to participate than those who were invited by talk page message alone.

Q&A guests (invited)	14
Q&A guests (not invited)	26
email hit rate*	3%
no email hit rate	1%

*percent of guests who were emailed who actually showed up.

Guests invited per host

Rosiestep and SarahStierch invited the most guests!

invites by host
Rosiestep	394
SarahStierch	233
Charlesdrakew	65
Ocaasi	35
Trevj	22
Nolelover	16
Bilby	14
Bill william compton	6
ItsZippy	6
ReelAngelGirl	3
Rosalina2427	1

Invitees per invite location

Most guests were invited through the New editor contrib page, followed by the Database report.

invites by location
New editor contrib	610
Database report	102
Feedback dash	50
AfC help desk	16
WP Feminism	8
Watchlist	3
OTRS	3
Other	3

Basic Stats - since launch

Number of revisions to Teahouse/Questions per day since launch. This graph shows revisions by all users, not just new editors who asked questions.

Q&A Board guests, by invite location

Looking at the proportion of invitees who actually showed up, the Database report and Feedback Dashboard seem to be the best place to find new editors to invite. This suggests that hosts should focus on inviting editors from these locations, rather than focusing so heavily on the New editor contribs page.

Many guests who were not invited by hosts showed up at the Teahouse Q&A board. Many of these guests were students who are currently studying Wikipedia and were invited to participate by their Online Ambassadors or by J-Mo. We can expect the number of student participants to decline in coming weeks.

questioners by location		hit rate*
New editor contrib	16	3%
Database Report	7	7%
Feedback dash	5	10%
wasn't invited - came anyway	33

* percent of people invited through that location who asked a question on the Q&A board.

March 5th report

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share some number from our first week. These are not only interesting to look at, they can help us spot trends and identify strategies that are working. I'm posting it here for now because this is where the action is, but if someone wants to make a 'reporting' page for hosts and throw it up there, that would be totally fine with me.

Invite rockstars

First, invites! Here are the hosts who invited users to Teahouse (at least those who noted it on the "Invite Tracking" spreadsheet). Congrats to Rosie and Sarah for their contribution here!

host	# invites sent
SarahStierch	317
Rosiestep	215
Jayron32	33
Charlesdrakew	32
ItsZippy	30
Trevj	24
Rosalina2427	19
Nolelover	9
McDoobAU93	6
Bilby	4
Lukep913	2
ReelAngelGirl	2

Overall metrics

Next, I wanted to give some overall metrics on invitees. These are already out of date, as we've had several new questions and intros since I ran the numbers yesterday. The overall count isn't that impressive yet, but in general we're seeing a steady acceleration in the number of newbies per day.

overall stats
how many newbies were invited?	694
how many showed up?	30
how many posted questions?	18
how many created an intro box?	18
how many did both?	6
how many were not invited at all (or at least not tracked on the tracking sheet), but showed up anyway?	4

Sampling strategies

As you can see, we sampled from a variety of different locations. Some locations seem offer more bang for your buck than others. In particular, the database reports and the new editor contrib filter seem like the most promising places to look for newbies to invite.

where were the newbies found?	total invites sent	number who showed up	% who showed up
database report	82	6	7%
new editor contrib filter	335	18	5%
feedback dashboard	84	2	2%
NPP	90	0	0%
Global Ed	57	0	0%
Global Ed Collab	46	0	0%
other location	22	0	0%

To email or not to email?

I wanted to mention one thing I saw in the data in particular: emailing users who have the email this user feature really seems to work. Consider this: we only emailed 102 users. However, of the 30 newbies who showed up, 7 had received an email. That's almost 25%! So it looks like using the "Email this user" feature in addition to using a talk page template is a good strategy for reaching out to newbies, if they have it enabled (the database report page shows which ones do). And remember that if you use the "email this user" feature, your email will not be shown.

That's it for now. Any questions for me? How are things going in general? Any 'feature requests' (I've already got the header for the invite templates on my to-do list)?. Keep up the good work! - J-Mo 20:12, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I suggest a slightly different calculation:

102 people were emailed; 7 showed up (just under 7%)

592 people were contacted via user talk pages [694-102]; 23 showed up (just under 4%)

So emails appear to be roughly twice as effective as user talk pages. Unfortunately, there are two assumptions in that conclusion that may not be valid:

(1) New editors who enable email are similar to those who do not. (The only way to test this assumptions is to take a group of editors who have enabled email, and send half of them an email and half a user talk page invitation. It's not clear that was done. Alternatively, one could look at the 592 people contacted via user talk pages, and see what the response rate was for those with email enabled.)

(2) Those receiving an email invitation came from seven places where newbies were found, and in the same proportion, as those getting user talk page invitations. (Why is this critical? If emails were sent, for example, only to new editors found via the database report and the new editor contrib filter, then the expected response rate would be between 5 and 7%, and getting a 7% response would not indicate that email is better. Again, a systematic approach - start with a homogenous group, say only those with email enabled and found via the new editor contrib filter, and then split it into halves, randomly - is the only way to be comfortable with the conclusion that email is better.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi John, thanks for your input. I don't have a hypothesis either way about (1) or enough data to begin measuring it accurately if I did, and we definitely don't have a large enough sample yet to figure out whether or not (2) is true. There are other potential confounds too, of course. As there always are. :) I'd love to chat with you about them, if I see you at #wikipedia-teahouse. cheers, J-Mo ^{Talk to Me} _{Email Me} 15:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)