For peer production communities like Wikipedia to thrive, they need to attract and retain new contributors. In a 2020 study with the French language Wikipedia, CAT Lab tested ideas for welcoming newcomers and organizing volunteers to offer mentorship.
Resources
- Community debriefing: Do Automated Welcomes Improve Newcomer Retention on French Wikipedia? (Français)
- Academic pre-print: Effects of Receiving Personalized Welcome Messages on French Wikipedia
- Project description on Wikipedia Meta
- Experiment plan: Effects of receiving personalized welcome messages on French Wikipedia
- Experiment plan supplement (where we decided to drop the survey questions from the analysis due to low response rates)