Research:First messages to new users

WSoR 2011

This project page documents a research project currently in progress. Information may be incomplete and can change rapidly as science advances.

Research project

First messages to new users
main contact	R.Stuart Geiger UC-Berkeley Wikimedia Foundation
start	2011-07
end	2011-07
status	in progress
fields	social computing human–computer interaction
open data
open access
WMF support	HO
Wikimedia research projects

Topic

Who is sending messages to new users, and what tools and scripts are they using? This sprint will break down these figures, particularly along the subjects of:

• First messages sent to new users

Process

Using a live replicating copy of the English Wikipedia database, these types of first messages can be acquired through a few basic steps:

1. Get every distinct user_name from enwiki.user
2. Join enwiki.user.user_name with enwiki.page.page_title to get all user talk pages
3. Join enwiki.revision.rev_page with enwiki.page.page_id to get all the first revisions to a user talk page
4. Parse rev_comment to determine tool and message type (requires a list of all tools, their names, and the automated edit summaries they leave)
5. Parse rev_user and user_id to determine metadata

Results and discussion

Future work

Does the tool used and/or message type predict retention? Tricky, because tool users are selecting from different populations to begin with.