Forum:Ideas for user retention

Forums: Index → War Room → Ideas for user retention

It was brought up in #wiki-discussion recently that there might be some changes we can make in an attempt to improve the new user experience and retention. It became relevant during Forum:Removing Discussions that we should be doing more to try to bring new users in, and we should be exploring options to make this easier. This is an ongoing thing that is always important, but for this forum we have a couple of ideas.

Get rid of templated warnings. It has been noted before in Forum:Warning templates and others that templated warnings for just about everything except vandalism are very impersonal, and that it can be harrowing for new users to be faced with a wall of text complete with a listing of things that they probably didn't do most of. If we remove them entirely, then each warning will have to be manually explained by whomever is posting it. This will grant a great deal of personability to each warning and will cut down on the monolithic nature of current templates. It could be argued that you can simply add a personal message in {{{2}}} of any of the warnings, but far too infrequently is this ever done.
Enable wiki achievements. We ran a trial run of these years ago but they were disabled after the consensus deemed them not useful. I think it's worth at least revisiting the possibility of using them since our current wiki culture and community is far removed from 2010's. Similar to discussions, achievements are a fun little supplement to the editing experience. They are definitely not strictly necessary in any capacity, but I would speak from experience to say that they have been a fair success on Crysis Wiki where I enabled them. They provide just a bit of positive reinforcement when new users do certain things (which can be customized); I think this could be a nice addition to our new user experience. It's no secret we have user retention issues, and given that today's users are a different breed than they were 7 years ago (i.e. younger), I think it could help some users understand the fundamentals of contributing a little more easily.

Please add any additional ideas you feel are relevant to the nature of this forum. We have forums like this every so often and rarely do they ever produce tangible results, but each outing at least provides different perspectives dependent on the timing and users currently active. Joe 01:47, June 2, 2017 (UTC)

Relevant links

Discussion

I'm all for both, if it gets users. I know achievements could work to help users want to do more. It's a fun, somewhat addicting little thing that doesn't hurt anybody. It could drive up "user competition", though. But, I don't think that'd be a big deal. I don't have a problem with personally writing out warnings, either. http://i.imgur.com/GhKJh.pngP90^Deathmanhttp://i.imgur.com/uceaHlB.png01:52, June 2, 2017 (UTC)

Achievements are a big no from me. We shouldn't be attracting users on the basis that they'll reach the top of a leaderboard, as that sort of system just causes burnout to happen too quickly. Capt. Miller^Talk 03:33, June 2, 2017 (UTC)

Both are a hard no from me. The achievements added nothing to the wiki and really just encouraged edit boosting rather than productive editing and gives the wrong impression of what editing is about by giving it a ranking system. And are the other warning templates really used all that much that they warrant removing them? I don't see the image template being used much any more and the bad edit template really only seems to get use when a user makes the same wrong edit pretty consistently. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 05:26, June 2, 2017 (UTC)

Regarding warning templates, I wouldn't really say get rid of them, but I agree that users need to make sure not to use them without actually explaining the situation. Regarding things like vandalism, licensing images, advertising and the like, they're fine. The main problem is the "bad edit" template, which some people commonly use without directly saying what the other user did wrong. In this particular case, yeah they should go towards particular messages, be it in the {{{2}}} parameter or just a standalone message. But achievements? Nope. They're completely unnecessary, and I would even say that they're unprofessional on a wiki like ours, not to mention that they will increase the risk of edit boosting. Ultimate94ninja ^{talk · contribs} 20:36, June 2, 2017 (UTC)

For option 1, I'm on the fence. Namely for things like vandalism, sometimes it is a bit faster to use a template. So perhaps I'm for it for things like bad edits, where a proper input is needed, and against it for warnings that are just clear cut warnings, like vandalism. As for option 2, I wasn't here for the first test, so I'm mildly open to giving it a another test run. If it falls in to the same pitfalls as the first time however, such as needless edit boosting, then it may be worth considering achievements just aren't meant for here.

Crazy sam10 • Talk

15:58, June 10, 2017 (UTC)

I know you already know, Sam, but I just want to mention for everyone else that we disabled achievements almost 7 years ago. The wiki and userbase are vastly different now then they were then and I would expect different results from another trial run. Joe 00:40, June 11, 2017 (UTC)

But a lot of the complaints around achievements have nothing to do with the editing base.

"It has really stressed quantity over quality."

"On a wiki, when users see the possible rewards and badges they can get by hitting the Save Page button x times, it's a recipe for unproductive editing that will, ironically, result in even higher achievement scores by users busily reverting bad edits."

"All the system encourages is an increased aggregate of edits, regardless of the quality or content."

"[The old system] did not actively encourage users to make a large quantity of edits in order to receive a "shiny new badge."

"Users should be drawn to the wiki and be compelled to edit it not for some silly badge or a number of points next to their name"

"This achievement system perpetuates the common misconception that the more edits/points a user has, the greater standing and weight the user will have in the community."

"They're annoying to me and they definitely encourage, or at least easily allow, edit whoring, boosting, as well as ... incredibly minor, pointless edits."

"Achievements will make users edit for the wrong reason: to earn more achievements/points etc.. The purpose of editing is not for points, but to make the wiki better."

"[I]t doesn't give experienced users recognition for prior edits."

"I feel that this will encourage bad edits (i.e. spamming categories, blanking pages and then reverting them, adding a bunch of images that are irrelevant to the page and then reverting it)."

"Leaderboards puts the idea to make users better than each other by putting a rank on them"

All are complaints from the last trial run that are still issues regardless of the current state of the community vs. the previous state. Just because the community is different now doesn't necessarily mean that old concerns are invalid. Sure some of these may be the same or nearly the same, but they are still valid concerns to have about implementing achievements. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 02:30, June 11, 2017 (UTC)

I'll agree there are some perfectly valid points in there, but what stuck out to me was "Users should be drawn to the wiki and be compelled to edit." That's sort of the entire issue we're facing here. Though it would be difficult to quantify, achievements could potentially keep some new users here and give them a bit more motivation to edit. We have to consider the types of users that view our articles nowadays--the same ones that are using Discussions, and the same ones that might not even know there's a link between the wiki and Discussions. There are some potentially useful users already using our site that could become valuable editors if given a little positive feedback. Joe 00:44, June 12, 2017 (UTC)