User:TheSatanicSanta/Sandbox/EditorResearch

Please see my gist and the AN.

New users and contributions
In total, the contributions have been significantly less for users who did not have any message on their talk page. No user with no message had over 5 contributions. Furthermore, some users with messages had upwards of 200 contributions since joining. If not anything, this shows that in many cases, simply engaging the users when they join may make them feel more welcomed to contribute.

However, there were some users who had messages on their talk pages, but still didn't contribute a whole lot. This is examined later.

Talk pages, but no further editing? Why?
After looking at the user talk pages who contributed less than 10 edits, but had a talk page (Velharnin, XXFurtiiVytiiZz, Evnidetr, TheMadedOne, Mah000124, SlashSmash313, Electroduck1, TheRadicalWalrus, Xinitrcs), I have found that most of these talk pages were not very encouraging to new users. If they were not flatly rude, they were very... "hard". I guess. What I mean is very emotionless and informative. At this point I am speculating that it would be better to be more encouraging than treat them like experienced editors who do not need... fluff.

Talk pages, and tons of editing? Why?
For this, I looked at editors who have contributed between 10 and 60 times, and have talk pages (Heniousycthe, Makukthegamer, Papac20x6, Marceronii, Aexeron, Whitemarsh, Akt0r, Ril1302, Himikokun, Prgd7). Interestingly, unlike the users who stopped contributing shortly after their messages, these users really didn't have a whole lot of discussion on their talk pages. Only 4 users in this category had anything more than Xbony's "welcome" message, one of which was just telling Xbony how encouraged they were. One was some stuff in Russian, which I can't read, so I dunno. The other two were either informing the user of our translation system, or asking the user to translate stuff (note, they didn't).

Implications/Results
So, from the results of the users who enjoyed and felt encouraged (10-60 edits), it can be assumed that users who receive Xbony's welcome message feel encouraged and welcomed. This should perhaps be something that all staff members do when they see a new user contribute.

On the contrary, it seems that users who receive "constructive" (really, it's telling them what to do) criticism makes them feel discouraged to edit further.

Response
So, from this, I think we should make two changes to the way we talk to new users.

First, we should welcome users nicely, like Xbony has been doing. It seems this is working.

Second, we should be much nicer to new users. Instead of immediately critquing them, we should welcome them, and encourage them to continue editing. This can be done with different language and different sentence structure. Instead of simply "Don't do this", we should try something new. I honestly don't know what exactly what we should do differently, but if we actually change the way we talk to new editors, I will be recording it and the difference over time.

Further research: New users over time
The following table shows the amount of new users, and new users who actually contribute, by month. It starts at January 2015.

If someone wants to figure out pChart4MW and implement a chart here, go ahead. I tried and failed. For now, here's a picture of the chart in my spreadsheet.

http://puu.sh/pSLKV/a334c61ab7.png

It shows two pretty important pieces of user creation history here on the wiki. First, it shows that around January of 2015, we had a huge spike of user account creation. Second, it shows that in general, the amount of new users we've had over time has generally increased, but the number of users actually contributing has stayed pretty much the same, or even decreased in the past few months.

IP Award: Does it matter?
I'm sure we've all seen shoving IP on IP talk pages. Recently, Jinboob brought up editor retention and how this "award" can be seen as condescending or dickish, and actually shoo away IP editors. However, after looking through the RecentChanges with registered users hidden, I've found that it doesn't particularly make a difference.

Notes:
 * The sample sizes are quite disproportionate, with most IPs that don't have the award being vandals.
 * I also did not look at edits by IPs that are actually known users being lazy, such as Jinbobo.
 * I didn't record the data in any meaningful way yet, because I have yet to figure out an efficient way to do so.
 * My sample size for total editors was very small. I only looked through the past 400 edits with registered users disabled, which is most of June 2016.

The majority of non-vandal IP editors only contribute a single time, regardless of the IP award. I found that most IP awards given were never even responded to. Furthermore, I found that IPs without the award didn't contribute after their initial edit anyway. If they did, it was often months later.

So, should we continue using the IP award, reword it, or deprecate it completely?

Honestly, I don't really know. I can definitely see it turning off potential editors. However, I also see it not having any effect, negative or positive. I'd like to investigate a bit more, but right now based on this data, I really don't see the point in using it.