User:Mr.Z-man/newusers

I ran a script that looked at all the user accounts created in February 2010. It looked at whether the user's first edit was to create a page, whether their first edit was deleted, whether their first edit was to a mainspace page, and whether or not the user was still active (that is, made any edits during the 30 days before the script ran on 22 September 2010). The results are below:

Summary

• Users who create an article are much more likely to leave the project if their article is deleted. 1 in ~160 will stay if their article is deleted while 1 in ~22 will stay otherwise
• Our main source of regular users is not users who start by creating an article.
  • Users who start by editing an existing page outnumber article creators by 3:1
  • Users who start by editing an existing article are far less likely to have their first edits deleted (and therefore are far more likely to stay)
  • From the users analyzed, we got fewer than 200 regular users from those who created articles (1.3% retention), we got more than 900 from users who edited existing pages (2.5% retention)
• A significant number of regular users (24%) get their start outside of mainspace.

The script

For performance reasons, the user accounts were determined from the new user log, rather than the user table directly. The script then gathered basic information about each account - editcount, user groups, block status. Users with a bot flag, 0 edits, or those that were indefinitely blocked were excluded. Users with indef blocks were excluded, as these are likely to be mainly vandals and sockpuppets rather than legitimate new users; a user with a shorter block may still be a regular user. There may be a small amount of error in the determination of whether or not a user created a deleted page (false negatives). If a user created a deleted page that was created by someone else and deleted, they won't have the earliest deleted edit for that title, so they won't appear to be the creator, even if they did create a version of it. Whether a user is still active was determined based on whether or not they had made any action in recentchanges.

The results

• Total number of accounts: 226099
• No edits: 155820
• Indef blocked: 5473
• Bots: 3
• Errors (likely due to an account being renamed + rename log oversight): 1

NOTE	DEFINITION
Create	User's first edit was to create a page
Non-create	User's first edit was to an existing page
Deleted	User's first edit was to a deleted page (regardless of whether they created it)
Non-deleted	User's first edit is not deleted
Gone	User has not made an edit or logged action in the last 30 days
Not gone	User has made an edit or logged action in the last 30 days
Main	User's first edit was to a mainspace page
Non-main	User's first edit was to a non-mainspace page

Analysis/Findings

First action was on a page in the main namespace

First page/First action	Article deleted	Article kept
Create an article 24.7% (12,600) users	N 99.3% (10,161) gone Y 0.7% (64) still here	N 95.6% (2,271) gone Y 4.4% (104) still here
Edited existing 75.3% (38,374) users	N99.1% (1,212) gone Y 0.9% (11) still here	N97.4% (36,220) gone Y 2.6% (951) still here

Raw data of create/non-create, deleted/non-deleted
Create, deleted, gone, main: 10161 Create, deleted, not gone, main: 64 Create, non-deleted, gone, main: 2271 Create, non-deleted, not gone, main: 104 Non-create, deleted, gone, main: 1212 Non-create, deleted, not gone, main: 11 Non-create, not deleted, gone, main: 36220 Non-create, not deleted, not gone, main: 961

First action was not on a page in the main namespace

First page/First action	Page deleted	Page kept
Create a page 65.5% (9,667) users	N 99.0% (892) gone Y 1.0% (9) still here	N 97.3% (7,653) gone Y 2.7% (212) still here
Edited existing 34.5% (5,073) users	N100.0% (117) gone Y 0.0% (0) still here	N97.0% (4,777) gone Y 3.0% (143) still here

Raw data of create/non-create, deleted/non-deleted
Create, deleted, gone, non-main: 892 Create, deleted, not gone, non-main: 9 Create, non-deleted. gone, non-main: 7653 Create, non-deleted, not gone, non-main: 212 Non-create, deleted, gone, non-main: 117 Non-create, deleted, not gone, non-main: 0 Non-create, non-deleted, gone, non-main: 4777 Non-create, not deleted, not gone, non-main 143