Research:Attached user

Attached user

Specification

A user who originally registered an account on project A ("home project") and visiting for the first time another project B, becomes attached to project B.

Measures

Related metrics

New editor

Status

draft

This page describes the class of registered users with a new account in a given Wikimedia project but previously registered on another project.

WMF standardization

When a user becomes attached to a project other than the home project, a record is created in the new project database. Attached users are not genuinely "new" and should not be counted as newly registered users.
An attached user's registration time corresponds to the time of the "attachment" event to the new project.

Data sources

Attached users are logged locally on a per-project basis via MediaWiki's logging table. Attachment history is logged globally in the localuser table of the CentralAuth database.

Sample queries

Attached users (local)

logging table

SELECT
  `log_user` AS user_id,
  `log_timestamp` AS user_registration
FROM
  enwiki.logging
WHERE
  `log_type` = 'newusers' 
AND
  `log_action` = 'autocreate' /* only include attached users, exclude new and proxy-registered users */
AND
  `log_timestamp` >= '20131001000000' /* specify a datetime range */
AND
  `log_timestamp` < '20131101000000' /* specify a datetime range */