Tim Growth Yayasan Wikimedia berusaha untuk membangun satu set sifat-sifat yang mendorong pengguna baru untuk membuat suntingan. Sifat-sifat tersebut telah terbukti meningkatkan keterlibatan pengguna baru.
Apa yang dimaksud dengan "mempertahankan kontributor baru"?
Untuk tujuan tim ini, " kontributor baru " adalah orang yang telah mendaftarkan akun pada proyek wiki, bahkan jika mereka belum membuat suntingan.
"Mengemulihkan" mereka berarti mereka membuat suntingan dan terus membuat suntingan dari waktu ke waktu.
Meskipun kami berharap bahwa kontributor akan ditahan selama berbulan-bulan dan bertahun-tahun, kami tahu bahwa mereka akan terlebih dahulu harus berhasil melalui hari dan minggu pertama mereka.
Hari-hari dan minggu-minggu pertama itu lebih mungkin menjadi fokus tim Pertumbuhan.
Ada periode waktu yang berbeda di mana kita dapat mengukur retensi.
Salah satu definisi mungkin "penyimpanan bulan kedua", yang berarti kontributor "menyimpan" jika mereka mengedit selama bulan pertama mereka dan juga mengedit selama dua bulan mereka.
Tapi definisi lain mungkin "pengembalian minggu kedua", yang berarti kontributor "dipertahankan" jika mereka mengedit selama minggu pertama mereka dan juga mengedit selama pekan kedua mereka.
Saat kita bekerja, tim Pertumbuhan akan menentukan jenis retensi mana yang paling penting untuk melacak dan meningkatkan.
Lihat halaman ini untuk definisi formal retensi.
Latar belakang
Proyek Wikimedia perlu memiliki aliran kontributor baru yang konstan untuk menjadi pusat untuk konten yang luas dan mendalam.
Kontributor baru menggantikan kontributor berpengalaman yang berhenti mengedit.
Mereka juga meningkatkan keberagaman komunitas penyunting.
Aliran editor baru ini memungkinkan proyek untuk mengembangkan konten mereka sambil meningkatkan keragaman konten mereka.
Namun dalam banyak proyek Wikimedia, jumlah kontributor aktif menurun atau tetap sama, dan tingkat retensi kontributor baru juga menurun atau tetap sama.
Masalah ini dipelajari dalam makalah tahun 2013 Bangkit dan Kemunduran Sistem Kolaborasi Terbuka: Bagaimana reaksi Wikipedia terhadap popularitas menyebabkan kemundurannya.
Penulis menunjukkan bahwa kontributor aktif di Wikipedia bahasa Inggris mulai berkurang pada tahun 2007, dengan penyebab utama meningkatnya hambatan teknis dan budaya bagi kontributor.
Sejak itu, pola serupa telah terlihat di proyek Wikimedia lainnya.
Data yang menunjukkan status kontributor aktif dan retensi kontributor dalam proyek Wikimedia akan segera tersedia.
Selain angka tingkat tinggi itu sendiri, penelitian tambahan menunjukkan bahwa banyak kontributor baru tidak mencapai potensi penuh mereka karena berkontribusi adalah baik teknis dan budaya rumit.
Misalnya, umum bagi kontributor baru yang bersemangat untuk memiliki editan pertama mereka dibalik atau halaman pertama mereka dihapus tanpa penjelasan informatif.
Hal ini menyebabkan mereka bingung dan kecewa, dan akhirnya tidak melanjutkan pengeditan.
Bersama-sama, angka, penelitian, dan cerita, berarti bahwa kita dapat melakukan yang lebih baik untuk melibatkan dan mempertahankan kontributor baru.
Secara khusus, Wikimedia Foundation memutuskan untuk fokus pada Wikipedia ukuran menengah karena proyek-proyek tersebut perlu mengembangkan konten mereka, memiliki tantangan dengan retensi kontributor, dan ada potensi untuk perangkat lunak untuk membantu.
To better understand what causes new contributors to stay and to leave, the Wikimedia Foundation completed the New Editor Experiences research project in 2017. The project identified the main challenges experienced by new contributors to Wikipedia, and a set of potential solutions. See the “Challenges” and “Solutions” sections below for the details.
The Growth team formed to take action on the challenges and solutions identified by the research project. We will continue our relationship with the Czech and Korean communities by testing changes in those wikis first. When we discover changes that increase contributor retention, we will engage other communities to consider deploying those changes in more wikis.
Although much valuable research has already been done to help our team understand new editors, important open questions remain. The team records and prioritizes our open questions on this page.
We will be deliberate about using research, data, surveys, and feature instrumentation to answer them.
Principles
The following is a list of healthy characteristics that we think wikis should exhibit with respect to new contributors. They are guiding principles for our team, and we hope to help make them a reality in the wikis we work with.
Diverse contributors lead to wikis with broad and deep content.
Contributors who want to make useful improvements to a wiki should all be able to find a place in the community where they fit in.
Contributors should be able to learn to edit on their own.
Contributors of any skill level should be able to ask for and receive help from other community members.
Contributors should be able to learn and edit in a supportive and non-confrontational environment.
Growth team mission
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation's Growth team is to support new account holders by designing and building engaging, intuitive, and inclusive products that make it easier to join the Wikimedia movement.
Growth team vision
We envision a thriving Wikimedia community where the barrier to entry for contributing to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is lower, allowing more people to successfully become active editors, and advance into roles that require more experience, leading to a sustainable and diverse knowledge commons.
Challenges
There are challenges that stand in the way of the principles above. The main challenges were identified by the New Editor Experiences research project that was completed in 2017. With the help of Czech and Korean community members, researchers interviewed 64 contributors to Czech and Korean Wikipedias to learn about why they started editing, what they found easy or difficult, and if they've stopped editing, why they stopped. The project surfaced a set of technical, conceptual, and cultural challenges, summarized below. Our team’s work will help wikis overcome these challenges so that the principles can become reality.
Technical: new contributors struggle with specific skills needed to contribute.
Editing: though Visual Editor is helpful for new contributors, it is hard for them to learn the process of building, citing, and publishing.
Communication: new contributors have trouble finding and using Talk pages. This is because Talk pages do not use Visual Editor, and because they work differently than other internet discussion systems.
Finding help: many wikis have scattered and inconsistent help materials that are difficult for new contributors to find and use.
Conceptual: new contributors have trouble learning core wiki policies and best practices. The following are the concepts that are most challenging.
Community: many new contributors do not realize there is an active community behind each wiki project.
Verifiability and citations: all content must be attributed to reliable sources.
Notability: all content must have garnered enough broad attention to deserve an article.
Encyclopedic style and neutral point of view: articles should present content without bias toward one side of an argument.
Copyright: content should not violate the licensing of its sources.
Cultural: the wiki environment can be discouraging to new contributors who are trying to find where they fit in.
Personas: new contributors have different objectives for why they are editing, but it is hard to figure out how to accomplish them.
Framing: the way that contributors communicate impacts whether new contributors stay. Negative feedback can discourage further contribution.
Solutions
The Growth team will attempt multiple solutions to the above challenges, and we will learn and expand as we go along. These are the findings from the New Editor Experiences project that will guide the solutions we attempt:
Intermediaries: many new contributors have succeeded because a partner or mentor helped them learn to edit. These partners are frequently found in off-wiki places like schools, libraries, or meetups.
Iterative learning: new contributors have more success when they learn editing skills over time in safe environments.
Outside help: new contributors frequently search for help outside of Wikipedia, either in off-wiki communications, or through other internet resources.
Those trends lead to two main categories of solutions to the challenges described above. The work of our team will usually fit into one of these categories:
Human-to-human help: forums and programs that connect contributors to each other so that experienced contributors can help newer contributors succeed. This can include help desk forums, mentorship opportunities, or even off-wiki connections.
In-context help: changes to the Wikipedia editing experience to surface helpful guidance around technical and conceptual challenges. This is guidance surfaced at the time it is needed, in the place where it is needed -- as opposed to on a separate page that may be difficult to find.
These are links and research that underpin the background, principles, challenges, and solutions above, and that continue to shape our team’s thinking.
