Product Analytics/Data Products/fawiki metrics summary

= Executive summary =

The Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia blocked IP editing on article pages between October 20, 2021 and April 20, 2022 by community decision. This report was commissioned by product leads to investigate the impact of the restriction on the project's health. The impacts on each metric are summarized in the below table after comparing the 6 months of restriction to the prior months in the same year, same months in prior 3 years, and other similar wiki projects. As Portuguese Wikipedia has enabled a wider restriction of IP editing on all pages, this report also looked into the similarities and differences of the impacts on the two projects.

Similar to Portuguese Wikipedia, the restriction prevented the creation of the edits that would most likely be reverted, and reduced administration page protections. Unlike Portuguese Wikipedia, the partial restriction on Persian Wikipedia did not drive new account creation or active logged-in editors, nor did it reduce the administration blocks. The impact on non-reverted content edits by users (net non-reverted non-bot content edits) is negative but not significant.

In summary, the restriction on article pages effectively reduced vandalism on Persian Wikipedia. However, the anonymous editors were not converted to registered editors after the restriction on Persian/Farsi Wikipedia. It’s recommended to re-visit the trends 6 months after the restriction was lifted, to assess whether the short-term impact is persistent or reverted.

= Introduction = The Persian/Farsi Wikipedia (fawiki) community made the decision to temporarily block anonymous editing on article (content) pages for 6 months (see consensus and ticket). Blocking was activated on October 20, 2021, Wednesday in the 42th week in 2021, and deactivated 6 months later, on April 21, 2022, Thursday in the 16th week of 2022. Per product leads’ request, the Product Analytics team provided quantitative analysis to assess the impact on the project's health. This report summarizes the trends of the metrics regarding editor, content creation and administration, and compares those metrics to the prior months, prior years, and other wiki projects.

= Methods and considerations =

Metrics selection and definition
The analysis focuses on the project metrics that are likely impacted by the restriction. Although the restriction only applied to articles, impacts on article talk pages were also assessed for possible side effects. Therefore, the page-based events such as edit, revert, protection, were evaluated on the article content pages (namespace=0) and on the article talk pages (namespace=1) separately, in addition to the overall trend on all namespaces.

Baseline selection
Three types of baselines are used in comparison analysis: (1) prior months in the same year, (2) same months in prior 3 years, and (3) other, similar wikis. This 6-month restriction was not conducted as a controlled experiment, as many variables might disturb the normal patterns and cause the changes of the metrics. For example, the pandemic is one of the biggest factors that has changed user patterns in the past two years, and its effects vary from country to country. As such, the comparison baselines should be used as a reference only instead of an assessment criterion. In the month-over-month comparison, the 6 months in restriction was compared to the period of 6 months prior to the restriction (6Mo ratio). A year of 365/366 days is grouped into the first half of the year, starting from April 21 each year, and the second half of year, starting from October 20 each year. In this division, the second half of the year usually has 1 or 2 days more than the first half of the year. Therefore, the ratio of 6 months over prior 6 months in the scenario of no impact and no seasonality is 1.005 ~1.01. To consider the seasonality, the 6Mo ratios of prior years are also referred to.

In the year-over-year comparison, the 6 months in restriction is compared to the same 6-month period of prior 3 years. 3 years prior(18/19) is pre-pandemic. 2 years prior(19/20) is the year partially in the pandemic. 1 year prior(20/21) is the year fully in the pandemic. * When IP editing was blocked on the article (content) page (namespace=0).

Based on the data from October 2019 to September 2021, 80% of edits on fawiki were submitted from Iran. In the comparison of wiki projects, six wikis were selected from the top ten wikis which were mostly edited in Iran. The six wiki projects are: Arabic Wikipedia (arwiki), Azerbaijani Wikipedia (azwiki), Central Kurdish Wikipedia (ckbwiki), Hebrew Wikipedia(hewiki), Persian Wikisource (fawikisource), Persian Wiktionary (fawiktionary). The general trend of the six wikis was assessed on whether the changes on fawiki were within a normal range. Because no two wikis are the same, the trend on the six wikis is a reference rather than a criterion. It’s observed that the Year-over-Year (YoY) or 6Month-over-6Month (6Mo6M) ratios on smaller wikis, such as Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Persian Wikisource and Persian Wiktionary tend to be more volatile than other medium size wikis. Also, the administration metrics tend to be more volatile than editors and content metrics, likely because administration actions were conducted by a small group of people for irregular needs. Four other wikis were not selected due to project-specific nuances. English Wikipedia (enwiki) was not selected because it is the biggest wiki project and could be impacted by many other global factors. South Azerbaijani Wikipedia (azbwiki) was excluded due to a poor correlation with fawiki in historical data. Turkish Wikipedia (trwiki) was not considered because trwiki had a level shift event during the comparison period – on 15 January 2020, the block of trwiki along with other language editions of Wikipedia in Turkey was lifted resulting in a metrics shift. Kurdish Wikipedia (kuwiki) was excluded because its metrics have high volatility with an unexplained spike of non-bot edits in the week of 2021-07-28, which is within the comparison period. = Impacts on editors =

Number of new accounts
* Restriction period

Number of active logged-in editors
* Restriction period

Takeaways
= Impacts on content =

Number of edits
* Restriction period

Number of reverts
* Restriction period

Net non-reverted edits
* Restriction period

* Restriction period

Takeaways
= Impacts on administration =

Protected pages


* Restriction period

Takeaways
= Takeaways =

= References =