Research:Lag between registration and first edit

This page in a nutshell: An overwhelming majority of new users (80%) make their first edit within a day of registering, and 75% make it within one hour.

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

Lag between registration and first edit
main contact	R.Stuart Geiger UC-Berkeley Wikimedia Foundation
co-investigators	Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia University of Lugano Wikimedia Foundation
WMF contact	not applicable
start	2011-07
end	2011-07
status	in progress
fields	human–computer interaction social computing
open data
open access
WMF support	HO
Wikimedia research projects

This sprint investigates the research question: How long does it take for new users to make an edit once they register an account?

Process

Data for a registered user's first edit ever -- which includes live and deleted edits -- was generated. This was then compared to the user's registration date. Note: because of legacy installations of MediaWiki, user registration data may be inaccurate prior to 2005. At that time, the software would sometimes record the date of a user's first edit as their registration date. However, this makes up a small percent of users given the massive growth in registration and editors in 2006-7.

The data for all users were then fitted to a Gaussian mixture model, a clustering technique that is able to separate lag observations in several classes (or components). We tried fitting a mixture of N=2,3, and 4 components. Estimation of the parameters of the model is performed via the Expectation Maximization algorithm (EM). The data are first transformed in logarithmic scale (base 10). If data are log-normally distributed, then we should see that the logarithm is distributed according to the normal distribution.

Results

What percentage of registered users edit?

Pie Charts

Histogram with model fit

Mean (days)	Median (days)	Std. Dev. (days)	Prob.
741.5	18.36	2.993e+04	0.2926
0.008591	0.004197	0.01534	0.7074

Data

Days between reg and first edit	Number of users	Percent of all users
0	3477450	80.867%
1	146917	3.417%
2	48885	1.137%
3	33918	0.789%
4	28088	0.653%
5 to 10	111996	2.604%
11 to 20	94112	2.189%
21 to 31	59312	1.379%
31 to 60	73512	1.710%
61 to 180	130443	3.033%
180 to 365	95563	2.222%
Total < 1 year	4300196	100.000%

Hours between reg and first edit	Number of users	Percent of all users	Percent of < 1 day users
0	3257914	75.762%	93.687%
1	111753	2.599%	3.214%
2	35798	0.832%	1.029%
3	18451	0.429%	0.531%
4	11214	0.261%	0.322%
5	7382	0.172%	0.212%
6	4881	0.114%	0.140%
7	3518	0.082%	0.101%
8	2631	0.061%	0.076%
9	2451	0.057%	0.070%
10	2278	0.053%	0.066%
11	2255	0.052%	0.065%
12	2200	0.051%	0.063%
13	2068	0.048%	0.059%
14	1972	0.046%	0.057%
15	1864	0.043%	0.054%
16	1777	0.041%	0.051%
17	1561	0.036%	0.045%
18	1503	0.035%	0.043%
19	1307	0.030%	0.038%
20	1061	0.025%	0.031%
21	854	0.020%	0.025%
22	562	0.013%	0.016%
23	195	0.005%	0.006%
Total < 1 day	3477450	80.867%	100.000%

Minutes between reg and first edit	number of users	Percent of all users	Percent of < 1 hour users
0	293625	6.828%	9.013%
1	387565	9.013%	11.896%
2	360452	8.382%	11.064%
3	290431	6.754%	8.915%
4	232709	5.412%	7.143%
5	190312	4.426%	5.842%
6 to 10	588981	13.697%	18.078%
11 to 20	484058	11.257%	14.858%
21 to 30	207025	4.814%	6.355%
31 to 40	111793	2.600%	3.431%
41 to 50	68942	1.603%	2.116%
51 to 60	42021	0.977%	1.290%
Total < 1 hour	3257914	75.762%	100.000%

Future work

Separate out this data by registration cohort: has this changed over time?