Research:Newbie reverts and subsequent editing behavior
 | This page in a nutshell: This research looked into the effect on newbies of having their first edit reverted. It concluded that newbies whose first edit is reverted are much less likely to stay and the effect of that has increased over time |
Contact
Question[edit]
Is a newbie particularly affected by having their first revision reverted? Of the editors whose first edits were reverted, yet they stayed, what is their subsequent editing behavior in the next 300 days? (RQ1.5)
- Did the number of editors who had their first edit reverted change during the years 2005-2009?
- Has their retention rate changed over time?
Methods[edit]
To answer this research question, the following data was generated for each year (2005-2009) via a series of queries to the Wikilytics database.:
- A list of editors who made their first edit in each year.
- The number of edits each editor made in the first 24 hours and subsequent 30, 90, 180, and 300 days from their first edit.
- Each editor's first edit was compared with a revision table to determine if it had been reverted.
Results and discussion[edit]
All Editors and All Namespaces[edit]
| Year | New Editors | 30 days | 90 days | 180 days | 300 days | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| 2005 | 142,202 | 55,515 | 39.0% | 34,399 | 24.2% | 35,130 | 24.7% | 36,867 | 25.9% |
| 2006 | 573,855 | 183,507 | 32.0% | 100,924 | 17.6% | 96,777 | 16.9% | 93,178 | 16.2% |
| 2007 | 74,0843 | 202,112 | 27.3% | 88,906 | 12.0% | 75,500 | 10.2% | 70,140 | 9.5% |
| 2008 | 646,093 | 160,889 | 24.9% | 65,226 | 10.1% | 54,110 | 8.4% | 49,556 | 7.7% |
| 2009 | 383,479 | 86,515 | 22.6% | 35,315 | 9.2% | 29,505 | 7.7% | 27,482 | 7.2% |
| Year | New Editors | 30 days | 90 days | 180 days | 300 days | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| 2005 | 13,677 | 3,547 | 25.9% | 1,692 | 12.4% | 1,525 | 11.2% | 1,561 | 11.4% |
| 2006 | 87,024 | 20,891 | 24.0% | 7,987 | 9.2% | 7,163 | 8.2% | 6,367 | 7.3% |
| 2007 | 145,464 | 29,791 | 20.5% | 8,807 | 6.1% | 6,767 | 4.7% | 5,864 | 4.0% |
| 2008 | 14,4927 | 27,810 | 19.2% | 7,568 | 5.2% | 5,754 | 4.0% | 4,876 | 3.4% |
| 2009 | 81,312 | 14,971 | 18.4% | 4,102 | 5.0% | 2,992 | 3.7% | 2,623 | 3.2% |
Editors in Namespaces 0 and 1 (Article and Article::Talk)[edit]
Summary[edit]
- Editor retention has been decreasing over time.
- The negative effect of a revert has increased over time.