Research:Training for new users
This page documents a proposed research project.
Information may be incomplete and may change before the project starts.
This project will test whether posting links to the new user training modules on Programs & Events Dashboard — adapted from Wiki Ed's student trainings — is helpful for new Wikipedia editors, in terms of improving the rate at which they stick around and become active editors.
Methods edit
We'll use a bot to post a template, w:template:Training modules invitation, to the talk page of some new users, while putting other new users in a control group with no intervention. Then we'll whether these users who were invited to try the training modules are more productive and stick around longer.
Timeline edit
Please provide in this section a short timeline with the main milestones and deliverables (if any) for this project.
Roughly:
- April 2017: Prepare the bot, get permission from English Wikipedia community to run the experiment
- May/June 2017: Run the bot, posting to the talk pages of 5000 new users with the same number of users as a control group
- July/August/September: Analyze the results
Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research edit
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.
None.
Results edit
Once your study completes, describe the results an their implications here. Don't forget to make status=complete above when you are done.