Post-edit feedback

Background
Previous research demonstrated that feedback mechanisms have a positive effect on incentivizing repeated contributions in collaborative communities. . According to the currently available research literature, providing feedback to wiki editors -- whether that feedback is a simple confirmation, an expression of gratitude, or user contribution statistics -- offers a potential retention incentive, or a "feedback mechanism that encourage individuals to continue contributing over time".

Types of feedback

 * Confirmation
 * Confirm that the user has saved an edit, e.g. Thanks. Your edit was saved.


 * Gratitude (general)
 * Thank the user for successfully completing a revision, e.g. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!


 * Gratitude (personal)
 * A thank you message to the user from a specific donor, editor, or other individual


 * Historical feedback
 * Display a counter of lifetime contributions. Congrats, you've now completed your 100th edit!


 * Predictive feedback
 * Encouraging editors to reach a milestone. Keep it up! One more edit and you'll have made 50!


 * Visibility
 * Increase motivation by showing the visibility and impact of an editors contributions. You just modified an article that was seen by X users over the last hour.


 * Relative ranking
 * Display the rank of a contributor relative to some context (e.g. an article, a wikiproject). Congrats, you have contributed more than the average contributor to this article.


 * Social ranking
 * Display the rank of a contributor relative to peers within some context (e.g. an article). [user X] [me] [user Y]. Example: You're in the top five editors who joined this month!

Hypotheses

 * 1) Providing any kind of feedback after a user successfully edits will motivate them to edit more, as compared to users who receive no feedback post-edit.
 * 2) Providing feedback specific to the user and their experience in editing will be more effective at encouraging further participation, compared to generalized feedback or none at all.

Technical requirements

 * Message will be displayed to user after submission of edit.
 * Message will appear in a notification box.
 * Message will display on the article page in one of three places:
 * aligned top and left with the chrome
 * aligned center horizontally, between the article/talk tabs and the article title
 * aligned center horizontal and vertical on the separator line beneath the article title if user clicked on main edit; aligned center horizontal and vertical on the section separator line if user clicked on section edit link.
 * Message will disappear after 20 seconds.
 * If the message is one that appears on every edit, users have ability to opt-out of further notifications

Potential future work
Once the basic infrastructure for this experiment is in place, multiple iterations exploring the effects of different types of feedback can be tested, including the following:


 * Leaderboards
 * Direct social feedback
 * Task recommendations