Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project/Report/Monthly (September-October 2012)
This is the report on the 47-day long pilot we ran in Bangla Wikipedia on our newly introduced help page system, designed for new and inexperienced editors to increase editor engagement in Bangla Wikipedia. The pilot started in September 12, 2012 and ended in October 28, 2012. The pilot was in two phase. First 2 weeks of the pilot was on the new article creation help pages where we monitored the change in article per day figure in Bangla Wikipedia, and the rest of the days were on overall edits, including article creation.
We used central notice to ask attention of visitors and new editors about the pilot. Please see the previous report on help pages to know about the help page system.
Phase 1
[edit]| Month | Articles per day |
|---|---|
| June, 2012 | 5.03 |
| July, 2012 | 5.29 |
| August, 2012 | 8.00 |
| September, 2012 | 9.17 |
| October, 2012 | 6.11 |
| November, 2012 | 7.23 |
| Number of articles per day in each month during the project. The number in October decreased mostly due to low traffic due to holidays and vacation in the region. During the full pilot the article creation rate was 7.13 articles, but during the pilot focused on article creation the figure was 8.63 articles per day. | |
Phase one was focused on one single context -- about start a new article (see details in the last report) on Bangla Wikipedia. We specifically tired a single phase on this tutorial as in the past survey this was the most asked question from new and inexperienced editors. We managed to see a good growth in article per day figure.
During the pilot the Bangla Wikipedia got 7.13 articles per day, but in the phase one (when we focused on only new article creation) we got 8.63 articles per day. In the 2nd phase of pilot (in the month of October) there was a many public holidays and vacations so in October, the overall article creation rate decreased to 6.11 articles per day. But in November it started coming back to the normal growth again, in that month Bangla Wikipedia got 7.23 articles per day.
Here we did not count any redirects in article namespace or vandal pages on article namespace who were eventually deleted.
Phase 2
[edit]Phase 2 focused on editors' growth in Bangla Wikipedia. This phase was focused on full frame help page portal (please see details in the last report) and multiple help pages, covering tutorials on most basic system and editing practice of Wikipedia.
| Duration | Number of users who made at least 5 edits in that time but have less than 100 edits in total |
|---|---|
| September 12, 2012 - October 28, 2012 (47 days in pilot) | 50 |
| August 26, 2012 - September 11, 2012 (47 days before pilot) | 21 |
| N.B. - Non-flagged bot edits are counted but they were very few. | |
During this pilot we saw a notable increase of new and inexperienced editors in Bangla Wikipedia. In a 47-day long pilot we got 50 editors who had less than 100 edits in total but made at least 5 edits during the pilot. With same condition, in last 47 days before the pilot Bangla Wikipedia had only 21 users who made at least 5 edits and had less than 100 edits in Bangla Wikipedia.
Comparison of current status of Bangla Wikipedia with similar Wikipedias
[edit]We have compared the result of the pilot with similar Wikipedias with more or less same article count. The Wikipedias we compared with Bangla Wikipedia are the following:
- Bangla Wikipedia (24,751 articles)
- Gujarati Wikipedia (22,271 articles)
- Swahili Wikipedia (24,583 articles)
- Afrikaans Wikipedia (25,207 articles)
| Duration | Number of users who made at least 5 edits in that time but have less than 100 edits in total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bangla Wikipedia | Gujarati Wikipedia | Swahili Wikipedia | Afrikaans Wikipedia | |
| September 12, 2012 - October 28, 2012 (47 days in pilot in Bangla Wikipedia) | 50 | 24 | 6 | 22 |
| N.B. - Non-flagged bot edits are counted but they were very few. | ||||
We compared 2 Indic Wikipedias (Bangla and Gujarati) and 2 African Wikipedias (Swahili and Afrikaans). Among these Wikipedias Bangla Wikipedia currently has the highest number of active users (236 users), the second highest is Afrikaans Wikipedia which has 163 active users. This demonstrate an exceptional growth in editor engagement in Bangla Wikipedia.