Bring on board new enthusiasts! A case study of impact of wikipedia art + feminism edit-a-thon events on newcomers

Abstract

Success of online production communities such as Wikipedia highly relies on a continuous stream of newcomers to replace the inevitable high turnover and to bring on board new sources of ideas and labor. However, these communities have been struggling with attracting newcomers, especially from a diverse population of users. In this work, we conducted a case study on how organizing an offline co-located event over a short period of time contributes to involving newcomers in the online community. We present results of our multiple-source quantitative analysis of Wikipedia Art+Feminism edit-a-thon as a case of such events. The results of our analysis shows that such offline events are successful in attracting a large number of newcomers; however, retention of the newcomers stays as a challenge.