Research:Account creation campaigns/Anonymous editors

This page documents preliminary results from two account creation campaigns:

anoneditwarning — placed on MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning on English Wikipedia
semiprotectednotice — placed on MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext on English Wikipedia

We launched and analyzed these two campaigns together because they target a very similar population of users. MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning is presented to all users editing while logged out, and invites them to either create an account or log in. MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext is presented to all users who click "View source" on a semi-protected page.

Preliminary data from first ~2 days

These campaigns were launched on 2013-06-19. We observed the following number of account creation events in the server-side account creation log, from the earliest event at 2013-06-19 13:10:08 through 2013-06-21 19:14:25:

anoneditwarning — 992 accounts registered (not counting one test account)
semiprotectednotice — 5 accounts registered
9310 total registrations (including 543 via mobile)

As you can see, users who sign up via the semi-protected notice comprise a tiny proportion of all registrations. Users who register via the anonymous editor notice comprise 10% of all signups during the same period – 11% if you do not include mobile users, who aren't presented with the option to edit – making them a not insignificant source of new Wikipedians. The very small number of registrations via the "View source" message can be accounted for by one of several potential explanations. First, the number of protected pages in the encyclopedia is relatively small. Second, of the users who might click "View source", they are confronted with a very verbose message with many links, unlike the anonymous editor message, which provides only three links in a one paragraph message.

Looking at the editing activity for these users, we see the following results for their edit counts across all namespaces in this time period:

anoneditwarning — 636 with 1+ edits (65%), 79 with 5+ (7%)
semiprotectednotice — 5 accounts registered, two of which edited

Full month of data

This following is anoneditwarning campaign data from August 2013. (One wiki with fewer than 10 signups removed.)

Wiki	Anoneditwarning signups	Total signups	% of total
enwiki	14538	123156	12%
eswiki	5052	27199	19%
frwiki	1524	10582	14%
dewiki	1375	7786	18%
zhwiki	1284	14955	9%
jawiki	983	4654	21%
ruwiki	599	9298	6%
itwiki	280	4261	7%
plwiki	220	1888	12%
ptwiki	211	8681	2%

The following is a full month of anoneditwarning data from September 2013 (one wiki with fewer than 10 signups removed).

Wiki	Anoneditwarning signups	Total signups	% of total
enwiki	12466	125063	10%
eswiki	4929	27566	18%
frwiki	1596	12512	13%
dewiki	1245	7549	16%
zhwiki	999	12751	8%
jawiki	880	4370	20%
ruwiki	542	10587	5%
itwiki	335	4553	7%
plwiki	237	2344	10%
ptwiki	191	8166	2%

Preliminary data from first ~2 days

Full month of data

See also