Experiment: Enforcement of email confirmation
Team: Product Safety and Integrity team
Experiment launch date: July 27, 2026

Motivation

We want to test email confirmation enforcement before considering a complete rollout. The experiment will determine which an upfront or delayed enforcement approach increases email confirmation while causing the least negative impact on editor and reader retention.

Hypothesis

If we apply upfront and delayed email-confirmation enforcement to new web accounts that provide an email address, the percentage of accounts who confirm their email address will increase because confirmation becomes necessary to access the account or edit, rather than remaining an optional action with no immediate consequence.

Experiment setup

• Users: New web users who sign up during the experiment period and provide an email address during account creation.
• Wikis: TBD
• Experiment setup
  • A/B test 1
    • Arm A: TBD
    • Arm B: TBD
  • A/B test 2
    • Arm A: TBD
    • Arm B: TBD
• Length of experiment: 2 weeks

Metrics

• Primary metric: Confirmation rate for new accounts that provide an email during account creation
• Secondary metric: TBD