affiliates, and communities, on the other hand is essential to growing larger and more diverse communities. However, we acknowledge its difficulty because of the myriad of factors to be addressed, as well as the lack of accountability to this purpose. This work provides a set of indicators to raise awareness and set a common baseline. We have also provided several target values to ease the indicators’ interpretation and set measurable goals on a mid-term and long-term basis. We encourage monitoring these indicators and those factors that may cause their improvement. The six Vital Signs should be seen as the final outcome in terms of community renewal and growth. Still, the quality of the atmosphere in terms of non-toxic language, editor satisfaction with the tools, among many other indicators, can be complementary to reach the same goals.
The indicators we have introduced are grounded on academic literature and community practices and based on the input and feedback received from Wikimedia communities. While in this paper we have only shown results for a sample of eight communities, used to validate the indicators with affiliates, we are working to create a dashboard that provides regular updates for all the more than three hundred existing Wikipedia language editions. We believe this will represent a significant improvement in the possibilities for community self-awareness and monitoring, which until now could only rely on basic statistics on the overall number of active users; with respect to these simple metrics, the Vital Signs allow for a much richer inspection of community composition and evolution.
We encourage monitoring these indicators along with those factors that may cause their improvement. The six Vital Signs should be seen as the final outcome in terms of community renewal and growth. Still, the quality of the atmosphere in terms of nontoxic language, editor satisfaction with the tools, among many other indicators, can be complementary to reach the same goals.
Affiliates recognize the role they have in pushing the necessary changes for renewal/growth, as they are constituted by community members. Having detailed community-oriented indicators can encourage them to set growth targets and complement the content-creation existing ones that are typical in the affiliate annual plans.
Renewal may be considered a positive aspect conducive to a sustainable community. We believe that communities can grow larger given the number of new monthly registered editors. While some communities are in the process of renewing, others are rather struggling for the initial growth-more than 250 Wikipedia language editions have less than 100 active editors per month. There are language projects which have not been consolidated. We believe that by addressing the factors that affect the retention rate, it may be possible to head towards the path of community renewal and growth.
Setting the goal of renewing and growing communities and tailoring different actions among Wikimedia actors, while tracking the indicators, can make Wikipedia a selfregulating community, larger and more vibrant than it is now. The “wisdom of the crowds,” that allowed Wikipedia to be so effective in creating free content to the surprise of everyone, may also show how Wikipedia can change its structures to stay inclusive to newcomers, and lead the way to other online communities to do so.
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, M.M.-R.; Data curation, M.M.-R.; Formal analysis, M.M.R.; Funding acquisition, M.M.-R., C.C. and D.L.; Investigation, M.M.-R., C.C. and D.L.; Methodology, M.M.-R.; Project administration, M.M.-R., C.C. and D.L.; Resources, M.M.-R. and C.C.; Software, M.M.-R.; Supervision, D.L.; Validation, M.M.-R., C.C. and David Laniado; Writing—original draft, M.M.-R.; Writing—review & editing, M.M.-R., C.C. and D.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by the Wikimedia Foundation grant “Community Health Metrics: Understanding Editor Drop-off.” (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Eurecat/Community_Health_Metrics:_Understanding_Editor_Drop-off) [accessed 22 February 2022].
Data Availability Statement: All code is available through GitHub at: https://github.com/WikiCommunityHealth/ accessed on 22 February 2022. Data are publicly available through at: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/ accessed on 22 February 2022.
