Wikipedia decline halted?

[Poetlister]

The latest data on the number of "very active" (whatever that means) editors show that the number bottomed out in 2013-4 and is now back to 2011 levels, although the rise has levelled off.

[thekohser]

Someone should be taken out and shot for that "heat map" color scheme.

Also, can they confirm that none of the "very active" editors are automated bots?

[Poetlister]

It's easy enough to exclude official approved bots. Of course, not all bots are approved; some are run from what appear to be ordinary accounts.

[Johnny Au]

It's easy enough to exclude official approved bots. Of course, not all bots are approved; some are run from what appear to be ordinary accounts.

At least none of those bots are clones of Lsjbot or else the English Wikipedia would have been much larger.

[Ming]

When you put the numbers on a graph it comes out to the number declining slightly for a few years and then stabilizing again a couple of years back.

[Earthy Astringent]

Someone should be taken out and shot for that "heat map" color scheme.

Also, can they confirm that none of the "very active" editors are automated bots?

Shot? That's a big harsh. Shootings should be reserved for people who use word clouds.

[thekohser]

Someone should be taken out and shot for that "heat map" color scheme.

Also, can they confirm that none of the "very active" editors are automated bots?

Shot? That's a big harsh. Shootings should be reserved for people who use word clouds.

I was thinking rainbow-colored paintballs. I'm not sinister.

Anyway, I wonder if we have a statistician in the house who might run these active editor numbers as a ratio, divided by "page views" or "site visitors" per month (or per year)? That would probably be more telling -- the percentage of total visitors who arse themselves to get actively involved on the site. That's the real story, not these (probably) statistically insignificant flat numbers.

[Randy from Boise]

Someone should be taken out and shot for that "heat map" color scheme.

Also, can they confirm that none of the "very active" editors are automated bots?

Shot? That's a big harsh. Shootings should be reserved for people who use word clouds.

I was thinking rainbow-colored paintballs. I'm not sinister.

Anyway, I wonder if we have a statistician in the house who might run these active editor numbers as a ratio, divided by "page views" or "site visitors" per month (or per year)? That would probably be more telling -- the percentage of total visitors who arse themselves to get actively involved on the site. That's the real story, not these (probably) statistically insignificant flat numbers.

You make the error of presuming a relationship between site views on the one hand and Very Active Editors ("Core Volunteers") on the other. This is the same error that WMF makes, incidentally — "if only we had more unique visitors, some fixed percentage of them would go on to edit WP and some of them would become 'power users' (their words, not mine) in the process." No.

In reality, page views are one thing and core volunteers are another. The latter don't accidentally happen, they are a unique breed of geeks and nerds with a messianic or educationalist bent — a more or less fixed quantity, moths who make their way to the light at approximately the same rate that others get singed or flutter off into the night.

I observed the end of the decline of core volunteers in real time and have commented probably a dozen times about the trend on Jimbotalk. Wikipedia started as a tiny little sprinkling, grew into a mass cultural phenomenon for a couple years, and then admin standards and sourcing standards tightened up. Volunteer ranks plummeted, WMF leadership shit their pants and ran around in circles without actually doing real analysis of the situation. No thanks to them, five or so years ago the decline stabilized and has to some extent reversed in the last couple years. The count of core volunteers — at EnWP and across all projects — currently remains flat, neither plummeting nor growing appreciably.

RfB

[thekohser]

You make the error of presuming <stuff>

And you make the error that I am trying to help Wikipedia figure out a rational way forward.

[Poetlister]

When you put the numbers on a graph it comes out to the number declining slightly for a few years and then stabilizing again a couple of years back.

No, it declines, then rises again slightly, and then stabilises.

[Poetlister]

Anyway, I wonder if we have a statistician in the house who might run these active editor numbers as a ratio, divided by "page views" or "site visitors" per month (or per year)? That would probably be more telling -- the percentage of total visitors who arse themselves to get actively involved on the site. That's the real story, not these (probably) statistically insignificant flat numbers.

I expect anyone who knows how to use a spreadsheet could do that. I think "site visitors" would be better, though even then they can probably only tell how many different IPs have viewed, so couldn't distinguish multiple users on one PC or one user on several.

[Randy from Boise]

When you put the numbers on a graph it comes out to the number declining slightly for a few years and then stabilizing again a couple of years back.

No, it declines, then rises again slightly, and then stabilises.

This.

RfB

[eagle]

If you exclude bot editors, should you limit page view data to human views and not bots that index for google or collect for the Siri knowledge base?

[Poetlister]

If you exclude bot editors, should you limit page view data to human views and not bots that index for google or collect for the Siri knowledge base?

Good point, and it would be far harder to identify those than bot edits.