Research talk:Wikimedia Summer of Research 2011/Questions

Predictions on newbie retention

Just to throw out my predictions before the amazing work being done here actually produces results--

Recruitment patterns have changed over time, and everything around here has changed during the same time.

My intuition is that the strongest factors are:

• An inability to lastingly alter article content. (increasing over time as articles accumulate edits and watchers-- weakly predicted by editing popular articles, predicted by reverts, deletions, or other edits that somehow 'destroy' rather than 'polish' a contribution in the contributor's eyes.)
• An pure inability to substantively add 'new facts' to an article. (increasing over time as our average article-viewed-by-newbies keeps increases in article length, approach article saturation.)

Can't wait to see what you all find! Good Work! --Alecmconroy 15:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)