Although each WE1.8 experiment was released as an A/B test, those experiments only measure the impact on a subset of users during the pilot phase. They do not capture the overall effect on permanent (non-temporary) account registrations once features are rolled out more broadly.
The goal of this analysis is to estimate the impact of the WE1.8 experiments on permanent account creation across Wikimedia wikis. This will likely require correlating experiment rollout timelines with changes in registration rates to understand which releases contributed to meaningful increases (or decreases) in account creation, and by approximately how much.
Early analysis suggests that the initial rollout of WE1.8.2 (the improved logged-out edit warning) was associated with an increase in account registrations. However, this rollout coincided with the Reading Challenge and other initiatives, making it difficult to isolate the contribution of any single change.
WE1.8 (Wiki Experience 1.8) is a product initiative focused on reducing friction in the account creation and registration flow across Wikimedia wikis.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Contributors/Account_Creation_Experiments
Experiments under this Key Result consisted of a series of experiments that were released in phases:
- Phase 1: A/B tests on pilot wikis with a subset of users to measure the impact of individual changes.
- Phase 2: Full rollout of successful experiments to all eligible wikis.
Essentially this task is about measuring the impact of Phase 2.
Account Creation experiments:
| Experiment name | Experiment report | Pilot Wikis | Phase 1: Pilot experiment release date | Phase 2: Full release date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WE1.8.2 Logged out edit warning | Test Kitchen experiment results | arwiki, frwiki, eswiki, dewiki, ruwiki, zhwiki, itwiki, ptwiki, fawiki, plwiki | 2026-03-17 | 2026-06-04 |
| WE1.8.3 Account Creation Form improvements V2 | Growth Book experiment results | enwiki | V1: 2026-04-13 , V2: 2026-05-21 | 2026-07-30 |
| WE1.8.4 Mobile Account menu | Test Kitchen experiment results | Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia | 2026-03-31 | 2026-07-02 |
| WE1.8.5 Reading List | Growth Book experiment results | dewiki, eswiki, itwiki, ptwiki, plwiki, nlwiki, trwiki, urwiki | ||
| WE1.8.6 Temporary Accounts | Growth Book experiment dashboard | arwiki, frwiki, eswiki | 2026-05-30 | TBD |
Deliverables
TBD: Attribution model with estimated contribution of WE1.8 to high-level registration metrics
