Research:Attached user

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
Attached user
Specification
A user who originally registered an account on project A ("home project") and visiting for the first time another project B, becomes attached to project B.
Measures
Related metrics
New editor
Status
draft


This page describes the class of registered users with a new account in a given Wikimedia project but previously registered on another project.

WMF standardization[edit]

  • When a user becomes attached to a project other than the home project, a record is created in the new project database. Attached users are not genuinely "new" and should not be counted as newly registered users.
  • An attached user's registration time corresponds to the time of the "attachment" event to the new project.

Data sources[edit]

Attached users are logged locally on a per-project basis via MediaWiki's logging table. Attachment history is logged globally in the localuser table of the CentralAuth database.

Sample queries[edit]

Attached users (local)

logging table
SELECT
  `log_user` AS user_id,
  `log_timestamp` AS user_registration
FROM
  enwiki.logging
WHERE
  `log_type` = 'newusers' 
AND
  `log_action` = 'autocreate' /* only include attached users, exclude new and proxy-registered users */
AND
  `log_timestamp` >= '20131001000000' /* specify a datetime range */
AND
  `log_timestamp` < '20131101000000' /* specify a datetime range */