Research:Mobile editor engagement/Editor activation
About
editThe following plots represent the rate at which newly registered users become new editors. I generated weekly new user cohorts for the first half of 2014, as a function of the site where they registered (desktop site vs mobile site) and measured the proportion of these cohorts reaching 1 edit or 5 edits in the article namespace within 24 hours of registration (edits to deleted pages in the archive table were not included).
Plots
editNew editors
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Arabic Wikipedia -
German Wikipedia -
English Wikipedia -
Spanish Wikipedia -
French Wikipedia -
Italian Wikipedia -
Russian Wikipedia -
Chinese Wikipedia
New active editors
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Arabic Wikipedia -
German Wikipedia -
English Wikipedia -
Spanish Wikipedia -
French Wikipedia -
Italian Wikipedia -
Russian Wikipedia -
Chinese Wikipedia
Discussion
editMobile is seeing strong organic growth in editor activation compared to desktop in 2014. Not only mobile registrations represent a large and growing share of total new user acquisition (accounting for 20-25% of all new registered users on most of the largest projects), but the rate at which these users become first time editors or new active editors on the mobile site started surpassing that of the desktop site on large projects as of the end of the first half of 2014. This change is organic in that no major feature release took place on the mobile site in the first or second calendar quarter of 2014 (the only major releases of 2014 – the tablet switchover and the launch of the new mobile android app – happened at the very end of the second quarter).
While on a project like Spanish or French Wikipedia the difference in 5 edits in 24 hours activation rate is not yet significant, if the current trend holds the difference will become significant within weeks. While the difference in 1 edit in 24 hours activation rates in mobile was expected (due to the restriction on anonymous editing on the mobile web and the presence of prominent signup calls-to-action), the organic growth of 5 edits in 24 hours activation rates was not.