Topic on Talk:Growth/Analytics updates/EditorJourney initial report

looking for a starting place

4
ARipstra (WMF) (talkcontribs)

When reading this finding, it made me think of a few participants from the New Editor Experiences research, who informed the "audience builder" persona. A few of those particpants had added information about themselves on their user pages. One in particular said he wanted a "profile" like there is on various social media platforms. This particular participant wanted a "profile" on Wikipedia because it is a world wide audience, and he wanted his "profile" to show up when people searched for his name online (he didn't understand that user pages aren't indexed). The few examples of this were people whose motivation to add content to Wikipedia were to build an audience for themselves, a product they were building, or a book they had authored. A few of the other audience builders were more focused on building an audience for a business (larger than just themselves), and so attempted to create article pages for that business. I am wondering if people create a user page right away, would it indicate they might be an audience builder? I am not sure about that, but wanted to share this thought, as it might help us to determine a user's motivation, thus which persona they might represent.

P.S I read the finding as them creating their user pages in their first day, but then talked with Marshall, and he corrected my understanding that the new editors were viewing the user page before it is created (the page that one lands on when clicking the redlink to then create a user page) , and did not actually create their user pages.

Revi (WMF) (talkcontribs)

This particular participant wanted a "profile" on Wikipedia because it is a world wide audience, and he wanted his "profile" to show up when people searched for his name online (he didn't understand that user pages aren't indexed).

This kind of people were what led kowiki to noindex of userpages <_< (Just my 2 cents)

RHo (WMF) (talkcontribs)

hi @ARipstra (WMF) - I'm also interested in digging further into reasons a relatively high number of people may be going to their User page after account creation. It would be great to get a break down the views by mobile/desktop, since my hypothesis is that it could be mostly mobile users going to the User page since it is a much more prominent menu item on mobile view and may be where people expect find profile completion or 'getting started' content.

MMiller (WMF) (talkcontribs)

One of the things I'm wondering about is whether building one's user page is or is not a good introduction to Wikipedia editing. It's sort of like a sandbox, in that it's a low pressure place to try out editing, plus it can potentially evolve into a valuable set of contributions for a future active editor. On the other hand, it may continue to allow new editors to be under the impression that they are making "their Wikipedia article", and then to be disappointed when they figure out that's not what they have done. Perhaps there is a way to alter the experience of creating a User page to make it clear what is or is not happening.

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