Editor engagement

Growing Wikipedia and its community

Editor engagement projects encourage the growth of the volunteer community that builds the free encyclopedia. They include efforts to retain existing editors, as well as to engage new contributors to participate on Wikipedia. To advance these goals, the Wikimedia Foundation is working with community members on a range of new projects, which you can read about below.

What's new

Here are some of our most recent reports and milestones.

Echo: A new notification system for Wikipedia

How can Wikipedia users learn about events that affect them, so they can contribute more productively to the Encyclopedia? Learn more about Echo, our new notifications project, which informs users of important actions that relate to them -- and invites them to respond to them quickly.

GettingStarted, introducing new Wikipedians to simple editing tasks We've unveiled an experimental interface, provided to newly-registered Wikipedians immediately after they sign up. By encouraging users who otherwise don't have an idea where to get started to try simple editing tasks like fixing spelling and grammar, we hope to grow the community.

Here is the problem

We call this the "oh shit" graph.

In early 2007, the number of active editors plateaued and then started decreasing. The rate at which new editors stick around plateaued even earlier, in early 2005, and then dropped sharply. These numbers haven't improved.

We need your help

Join us! Participate in our discussions and activities, and learn about new features and experiments. You can subscribe to our mailing list, and/or sign up for our on-wiki newsletters.

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Who we are

Product managers, community organizers, developers, designers, and analysts.

 See the rest of the team

What we are doing Here's a short list of our current projects aimed at improving editor engagement. Check out each talk page for comments or questions!