We briefly review the definition of these six aspects given by current research and within the Wikimedia Movement organizations and communities. In order to ensure the applicability of the indicators, we propose one research question for each of them.
2.3.1. Retention
Editor retention refers to the capacity of a Wikipedia language community to retain the new registered users (Meta contributors, ’Research:Editor retention’, Meta, discussion about Wikimedia projects, 14 January 2021, 08:15 UTC, https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Editor_retention&oldid=20958279 [accessed 19 February 2022]). It is a common measurement among open collaboration projects and platforms overall [32]. Sometimes it is also referred to as “editor survival.” In Wikimedia, it is often measured as the percentage of new editors who edit again after 60 days from the first edit [5] (Meta contributors, ’Research:Surviving new editor’, Meta, discussion about Wikimedia projects, 14 March 2018, 22:22 UTC, https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Surviving_new_editor&oldid=17835590 [accessed 19 February 2022]).
Wikimedia affiliates like Wikimedia Hungary have specifically created programs to improve retention (Meta contributors, ’Grants:Project/WM HU/Editor retention program’, Meta, discussion about Wikimedia projects, 5 September 2019, 21:31 UTC, https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grants:Project/WM_HU/Editor_retention_program& oldid=19355430 [accessed 19 February 2022]). Wikimedia Foundation has measures of community retention, but they are not available to Wikimedians in the form of a tool or a regularly updated table.
- RQ1 [Retention] How do Wikipedia communities retain new members over time?
2.3.2. Stability
Community stability refers to the capacity of a Wikipedia language community to maintain a core of active editors over time. While retention increases the number of active editors, stability implies that a substantial part of the active community is the same on a monthly basis. This is especially relevant in order to sustain long-term activities, such as the development of Wikiprojects focused on specific topics.
Opposite to a stable community, a very volatile one changes the active editors every month. While this can be seen as a sign of renewal, we may also see the possibility of a sudden drop in participation and incapacity to sustain activities such as covering topics related to the news. Community stability is simply the aggregation of individual measurements of editor loyalty, i.e., their recurrence over time. This is related to user loyalty, commonly measured in many platforms and websites [33].
To date, there is no measurement of community stability in prior research nor available to Wikimedians.
- RQ2 [Stability] How stable is the composition of Wikipedia communities over time?
2.3.3. Balance
Community balance refers to the capacity of a Wikipedia language community to incorporate new members and to maintain the old ones to reach a balanced composition of different generations of editors. Differently from stability, measuring the balance in terms of different tenure, we want to see whether the community is able to preserve the experience of those long-term engaged and at the same time acquire new editors’ freshness and energy. Balance falls between retention and stability, since the first one measures the capacity to attract and retain newcomers, and the second focuses on the sustained engagement. It is likely that communities that are able to retain new editors and sustain the engagement of more experienced ones will present a balanced distribution of the different generations.
With balance, we expect to see the state of renewal of the active community and therefore detect excess in volatility, with potential risks of sudden drop-out, or lack of
