Wikipedia Editor Drop-Off

While there is extensive literature both on the motivations of Wikipedia’s editors and on newcomers’ retention, less is known about the process by which experienced editors leave. In this paper, we present an approach to characterize Wikipedia’s editor drop-off as the transitional states from activity to inactivity. Our approach is based on the data that can be collected or inferred about editors’ activity within the project, namely their contributions to encyclopedic articles, discussions with other editors, and overall participation. Along with the characterization, we want to advance three main hypotheses, derived from the state of the art in the literature and the documentation produced by the community, to understand which interaction patterns may anticipate editors leaving Wikipedia: 1) abrupt interactions or conflict with other editors, 2) excess in the number and spread of interactions, and 3) a lack of interactions with editors with similar characteristics. We present this work both as a preliminary stage of our research to understand editor drop-off and as a flexible frame to look at the phenomenon that we believe can be useful in the future. Furthermore, by characterizing drop-off and identifying interaction patterns that may be associated with it, it may be possible to assess the general health of a community, and ultimately propose changes to improve it.