Engagement/MDN Durable Team/Community hypotheses

As part of 2016 research around community, the MDN team has tested some hypotheses. The first batch of hypotheses has been draft in October 2016 and the results are available below.

Summary of findings

See also this summary document.

Tactics	Status	Result	Notes
Give away t-shirts (long time contributors)	Done (November 2016)	Negative	Our first findings indicate that giving away t-shirt to long time contributors has no effect. It doesn't change their contribution behaviors neither reengage them if they've stopped contributing. It is recommended to run another test with new contributors to see the effect it can have on that different population
Give away t-shirt (New contributors)	?	?
Highlight top of the month contributors	Done (December 2016)	Positive	See Top contributors tracking spreadsheet Public promotion on Twitter had a positive effect on contribution by users whose Twitter handles were known and used. It is recommended to find ways to encourage contributors to add their Twitter handles to their profiles, as well as to start a program of thanking contributors on Twitter using their handles.
Publicly thank first-time contributors whose profiles contain Twitter handles	Done (July 2017)	Negative	Contributors thanked on Twitter did not contribute again after being thanked.
Engage “one shot” contributors one month after their last contribution	Done (April 2017)	Negative	Unthanked contributors were more likely to contribute again than thanked ones.
Engage first-time contributors one week after their first contribution	Done (April 2017)	Negative	Thanked contributors were no more likely to contribute again than unthanked ones.
Send a thank-you that shows contributors that someone read their contribution	Done (March 2017)	Negative	See Tracking spreadsheet; thanked users were less likely to contribute after being thanked than unthanked contributors; note that the sample size was very small (20/21 in each cohort)
Thank l10n contributors from the last month	Abandoned	?	Many of the contributors in the one-month-later and one-week-later experiments were l10n contributors.
Create a page listing l10n prioritiess	Done (January 2017)	Positive	See MDN L10n Priorities Status Our findings tend to indicate that promoting such priorities can help contributor to focus. Even if the results are pretty small in number they demonstrate a positive trend on the period (against a global negative trend) for establish communities. However, as expected it has no effect on abandon communities or communities that do not interact with the team through the regular communication channel we are using.
Advertise l10n priorities on the MDN homepage	Pending	?	On hold pending homepage redesign

Hypotheses

The following hypotheses has been formulated based on the expectation we have on how to move our community metrics.

More interaction increases retention

In order to check that hypotheses we want to test the followings tactics:

1. Engage “one shot” contributors one month after their last contribution

Personalized interaction increases retention

In order to check that hypotheses we want to test the followings tactics:

1. Send a thank-you that shows contributors that someone read their contribution

The more we engage community the faster l10n content increases

In order to check that hypotheses we want to test the followings tactics:

1. Thank l10n contributors from the last month

Increasing recognition will increase retention

In order to check that hypotheses we want to test the followings tactics:

1. Highlight top of the month contributors
2. Give away t-shirts
   • long term contributors results

Provide content priorities to contributors increase content creation

In order to check that hypotheses we want to test the followings tactics:

1. Create a page listing l10n priorities
2. Advertise l10n priorities on the MDN homepage