Research talk:How does the community's reaction to newcomer work affect retention?

User retention

Interesting the question not being asked is "Why do we loose established editors?" Sure new blood is good, but I would trade 100 average newbies for one really good, prolific, established editor. And we do know that we loose them in a continuous trickle, including much publicised door-slamming departures and expulsions, but also many who quietly decide the game is not worth the candle or simply move on to other things. Rich Farmbrough 18:19 24 September 2011 (GMT).

That's not the case at all. We've learned a lot about why established editors leave the encyclopedia by reading what they have to say when they leave and surveying them. It is much easier to ask an established editor about their experiences than to ask a newbie because the newbie doesn't stick around long enough to let us know why they left. Established editors have many advantages over newbies when it comes to dealing with community issues where newbies may not even realize that there is a community in the first place. We haven't observed a particularly strong decline in the top tier of Wikipedians, but we do observe a decrease in the amount of newbies who become Wikipedians. Where you say you'd trade 100 newbies for one competent Wikipedian, I'd like to remind you that the competent Wikipedian was a newbie once and a solution to the problems with newbie retention may also increase the ranks of Wikipedians. --EpochFail 14:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

(P.S.) I want to make clear that I don't mean to diminish the value of understanding issues in established editor retention. I just wanted to clarify my point that (1) established editor already have an effective platform voice their concerns/affect change and (2) the rate of newbie retention should be strongly related to the pool size of active Wikipedians. --EpochFail 14:29, 26 September 2011 (UTC)