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Research:Understanding barriers to newcomer retention

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This page documents a completed research project.

The guiding goal of this research was to better understand the key moments of attrition in newcomer journeys with an eye towards making product recommendations for how to help close these gaps. The below focuses on the more general research outcomes (as opposed to the specific product recommendations). While a large part of this work was synthesizing existing research, it also included three new projects (all three are in the process of being documented publicly so citations to them are placeholders until then):

  • Continuous Research: observational interviews with ~10 newcomers to English Wikipedia along with a follow-up interview approximately one month later. These were with brand-new editors so the focus was on why they had created their account and understanding what challenges they faced.[1]
  • Community Insights 2026: large representative survey of contributors across the Wikimedia movement. Included some related questions about AI usage, mentorship, editor interests, significant moments in one's editing journey, and a lot more.[2]
  • Affiliate perspectives on mobile onboarding for newcomers: interviews and focus groups with various Wikimedia Affiliates to understand how they approach onboarding of newcomers in contexts where mobile editing is more common.[3]

Research Findings

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The below findings are presented in no particular order.

Editing starts with reading

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Once an editor gets beyond their initial reason for making their first edit, they are faced with the question of what to do next. Finding interesting tasks is a key challenge for many newcomers[2] but quite important to their engagement.[2] Of the more successful newcomers in the Continuous Research pilot, it became clear that they had some method for building lists of tasks that they wanted to complete.[1] These lists seem to help them stay in an "editor" mode even when they aren't actively editing and jumpstart their work when the moment was right.

Crucially, these lists were largely accrued through the act of reading. Even the editors who did not continue to actively edit within Continuous Research reported that they continued to read and mentioned that they would encounter little things that they felt that they could potentially improve. That is, they weren't sitting down and building worklists as Event organizers might do but were mentally or otherwise flagging articles to return to as they read them. While reading appeared to be the primary entrypoint for finding future tasks, saving articles that are surfaced via edit recommender systems is also functionality in which newcomers have expressed interest.[4]

Feedback (or lack thereof)

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It's well-established that the "biting" of newcomers can be toxic[5] while receiving "thanks" boosts retention.[6] But many newcomers receive no acknowledgment of their work at all and it creates uncertainty.[1][7][3] The most common forms of interaction (on English Wikipedia) still seem to be (generic) welcome messages or varying levels of feedback accompanying reverts.[4] While reverts are still often perceived negatively,[4] anecdotally we see instances of very positive interactions arising when a revert becomes an opportunity for feedback and not just content moderation.

One challenge to fostering an environment in which newcomers receive more feedback is that this requires interest from experienced editors and a belief that it is time well-spent. Growth Mentors are a community who see these efforts as a good use of their time[2] and already have some infrastructure in place for supporting and interacting with newcomers. There are some issues to work out and many open questions, but the Mentorship Module could still be a good setting in which to test out tooling that expands existing feedback – e.g., giving more Thanks[2] without diluting its perceived value.[2]

A corollary to this is that editors do like looking at their own activity. Folks in Continuous Research did not comment much about the summary statistics on their Homepage but they were adept at clicking their edit count button to get to their Special:Contributions page (and would often use this instead of going directly to an article's edit history to find their contributions when we discussed them). More experienced editors have echoed this too – e.g., usage of watchlist as a nice reminder of improvements to articles you created.[8] So while specific feedback is likely more impactful than aggregate data about a user's actions to their retention, these metrics can still be valuable as a means of viewing one's previous activity and getting reminders about what they've accomplished.

Importance of specificity to progression/personalization

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Editors generally enter with a very specific goal but then often are curious to explore and try out other forms of contribution.[1] The newcomer tasks on the Homepage were intended to be one support for that but unfortunately newcomers generally do not find the topic filters specific enough[4][1] and only the more structured tasks have boosted retention.[9][10][11][12]

There are many open questions about how to best approach personalization, but where we saw editors learn new skills in the Continuous Research interviews, it was often via mimicry for closing content gaps that they had stumbled upon themselves. The interests of editors are often quite niche and recommendations need to reflect that if they are to be useful and intrinsically motivating.

Mentorship

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Newcomers are hesitant to reach out to their mentors[1] and mentors often receive repetitive/unclear questions, have concerns about COIs with newcomers, or aren't sure if the newcomer ever sees their response.[2] But support from another editor is very salient for those who receive it[2] while many new editors are increasingly relying on chatbots for support in navigating Wikipedia.[4][2] Growth's Mentorship Module has a lot of potential for expanding how newcomers receive Feedback but there are also still many more open questions to explore about how to balance these tensions.[13][14]

Niche topics

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An ideal place for newcomers to start seems to be niche topics that fewer people care about:[1]

  • They're less likely to run afoul of other editor's efforts when they make mistakes.
  • The tasks – i.e. what needs to be improved – are often clearer.
  • Their contributions to the existing content are often far more salient.
  • Their "expertise" is a lot more clear – i.e. the "why me" question is easier to answer because they often are interested because they have some expertise that they know others will not (this can look like COI at times, but it's clearly valuable for newcomer confidence).

Ironically, one would think that "niche" translates into lower-impact so less motivating to a newcomer. But the value of their edits is self-evident because they already care about the topic, so external validation like "thanks" or "pageviews" seem far less critical. Many organizers direct newcomers to projects like Wiktionary or Wikiquote first for this reason and due to the relative ease of editing.[3] Article creation is one extreme, which almost by definition is "niche" in most larger language editions and generally suggests lower potential readership. For a long time, there has also been a sense that Article Creation from scratch – i.e. not via translation – is a very tough place for newcomers to start and prone to issues/frustration. And yet, it remains a very common reason for creating an account[15][1][4] and is a powerful opportunity for progression and feedback when done well. Smaller language editions have a very different challenge though: a lack of digitized sources combined with low visibility to Wikipedia make article creation more difficult and less rewarding. This same lack of digital content makes projects like Wiktionary or Wikiquote more motivating though to contribute to (e.g., language preservation[3]) and far easier. All told, this speaks to the nuance of understanding which entrypoints for a given language community are going to be both rewarding and feasible for a newcomer.

Keep the vibes human

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Editors often remarked on how much they appreciated that Wikipedia was not social media[1] and that was a core motivation for them putting in the extra work to contribute. They like that it's generative (not doom-scrolling), not corporate, and not overly algorithmic/pushy (more pick-your-own-adventure). At the same time, they note that more notifications/support could be helpful. It seems that we can chart a path between being a more guided+personalized platform to editors while still allowing them to maintain autonomy.

Mimicry is quite key

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When learning new tasks, if they don't turn to AI or mentors, newcomers generally find success through mimicking existing examples on-wiki.[4] We saw examples ranging from creating new articles through mimicking the structure of existing ones to learning how to add citations properly by copy-and-pasting other ones and replacing the details.[1] This is especially important early on when editors often don't have the vocabulary/know-how yet to effectively search Wikipedia for documentation.

Free Time remains a barrier for contribution

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Folks often have good intentions / desire to contribute more to Wikipedia but (lack of) free time remains perhaps the largest barrier.[16][1][17][18][19] Some nuance:

  • This is particularly impactful for newcomers – editing is harder for them so it takes more time to complete edits. Newcomers also lack an editing routine and are less likely to have connections to other editors, which makes it easier to drift away.
  • From editing to <smaller, more mobile-friendly task>: editors do continue to read Wikipedia even when not editing content and would likely continue to contribute in these periods via simple curation / moderation activities[20][1] This lack of free time also can translate into Wikipedia activity moving from a laptop to a mobile device (more on-the-go).
  • Easy re-entry is key – the flip-side of lack-of-free time as a barrier is spike-in-free-time as an opportunity[21][2] where the key is making it easy in these moments to scale up one's activity or return to editing. For example, many new editors are creating their second (or third?) account[1][15][4] to get a fresh start or because they lost/forgot their credentials. We cannot force every editor to become an active editor in every month, but we can make it easy for them to edit when the time/opportunity arises.

Mobile editing

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It is clear that there are still a lot of reservations amongst more experienced editors about using mobile devices to edit[21][3] and a mixture of mobile editing practices for those who attempt.[2] At the same time, it is also clear that mobile devices cannot be ignored when it comes to methods for contributing to Wikipedia as many (newer) editors do not have consistent access to desktops and prefer using their phones.[3]

The most challenging tasks on mobile phones are generally ones that require switching between windows[3] such as checking other articles to see which infobox template is the right one, checking documentation to see how a date should be formatted in a reference, switching back-and-forth between a news article and the editing interface to copy in the details for a citation, or switching between Wikipedia and Commons to find an image and insert it. They're time-consuming, require a lot of clicking/scrolling/copying, and prone to error (accidentally closing a tab etc.). This is captured in the original strategy for Structured Tasks and can explain why an intervention like add-an-image (reduces dependency on switching to Commons) had an outsized impact on mobile contributions/retention while much more muted effects on desktop.[11] Add-a-link shows similar trends[10] though a bit more muted as to mobile vs. desktop,[11] which would again make sense as adding links does not otherwise require switching screens on mobile. And the impact of Tone Check[12] was much higher on desktop than mobile, which again makes sense as assessing the tone of content does not require switching tabs. As noted above, other opportunities that would likely have outsized impacts on mobile include improved search for templates (also a common stumbling point with newcomers in Continuous Research) and bringing VE to the apps, which would enable Citoid access and reduce the switching required for adding references.

See also

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Literature reviews:

Proposals:

Interview-based research:

Survey-based research:

  • Volunteer Archetypes[16]
  • Successful Newcomers Survey 2025[4]
  • Editor reflections[21]
  • Mentor reflections[13]
  • Welcome Survey Data (2023 data)[15]
  • Why Do Editors Leave Wikipedia? (2010 Survey)[17]
  • Exit-the-editor survey[7]

Log-based or experimental research:

References

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  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m task T410360
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Forthcoming 2026 Community Insights Report
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Research:Onboarding mobile-first newcomers/lesson learned from the ESEAP and South Asia region
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Research:Successful Newcomers Survey 2025
  5. ↑ Halfaker, Aaron; Geiger, R. Stuart; Morgan, Jonathan T.; Riedl, John (2013-05-01). "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline". American Behavioral Scientist 57 (5): 664–688. ISSN 0002-7642. doi:10.1177/0002764212469365. 
  6. ↑ a b Pennington, J. Nathan Matias, Reem Al-Kashif, Julia Kamin, Max Klein, Eric (2020-06-09). "Volunteers Thanked Thousands of Wikipedia Editors to Learn the Effects of Receiving Thanks". Citizens and Technology Lab (in en-US). Retrieved 2026-07-29. 
  7. ↑ a b Exit-the-editor survey
  8. ↑ a b Research:Watchlist and Task Prioritization
  9. ↑ a b Warncke-Wang, Morten; Ho, Rita; Miller, Marshall; Johnson, Isaac (2023-10-04). "Increasing Participation in Peer Production Communities with the Newcomer Homepage". Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7 (CSCW2): 280:1–280:26. doi:10.1145/3610071. 
  10. ↑ a b c d Add-an-image experiment results
  11. ↑ a b c Tone Check experiment results
  12. ↑ a b Mentor reflections
  13. ↑ task T397550
  14. ↑ a b c Welcome Survey Data (2023 data)
  15. ↑ a b Research:Volunteer Archetypes
  16. ↑ a b Why Do Editors Leave Wikipedia? (2010 Survey)
  17. ↑ Admin barriers to interest
  18. ↑ a b Serbian Newcomers
  19. ↑ a b Research:Centralized contributions for moderation activity.
  20. ↑ a b c Editor Reflections
  21. ↑ task T432293
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