I ran a script that looked at all the user accounts created in February 2010. It looked at whether the user's first edit was to create a page, whether their first edit was deleted, whether their first edit was to a mainspace page, and whether or not the user was still active (that is, made any edits during the 30 days before the script ran on 22 September 2010). The results are below:

Summary

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  • Users who create an article are much more likely to leave the project if their article is deleted. 1 in ~160 will stay if their article is deleted while 1 in ~22 will stay otherwise
  • Our main source of regular users is not users who start by creating an article.
    • Users who start by editing an existing page outnumber article creators by 3:1
    • Users who start by editing an existing article are far less likely to have their first edits deleted (and therefore are far more likely to stay)
    • From the users analyzed, we got fewer than 200 regular users from those who created articles (1.3% retention), we got more than 900 from users who edited existing pages (2.5% retention)
  • A significant number of regular users (24%) get their start outside of mainspace.

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The script

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For performance reasons, the user accounts were determined from the new user log, rather than the user table directly. The script then gathered basic information about each account - editcount, user groups, block status. Users with a bot flag, 0 edits, or those that were indefinitely blocked were excluded. Users with indef blocks were excluded, as these are likely to be mainly vandals and sockpuppets rather than legitimate new users; a user with a shorter block may still be a regular user. There may be a small amount of error in the determination of whether or not a user created a deleted page (false negatives). If a user created a deleted page that was created by someone else and deleted, they won't have the earliest deleted edit for that title, so they won't appear to be the creator, even if they did create a version of it. Whether a user is still active was determined based on whether or not they had made any action in recentchanges.

The results

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  • Total number of accounts: 226099
  • No edits: 155820
  • Indef blocked: 5473
  • Bots: 3
  • Errors (likely due to an account being renamed + rename log oversight): 1
NOTE DEFINITION
Create User's first edit was to create a page
Non-create User's first edit was to an existing page
Deleted User's first edit was to a deleted page (regardless of whether they created it)
Non-deleted User's first edit is not deleted
Gone User has not made an edit or logged action in the last 30 days
Not gone User has made an edit or logged action in the last 30 days
Main User's first edit was to a mainspace page
Non-main User's first edit was to a non-mainspace page

Analysis/Findings

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First action was on a page in the main namespace
First page/First action Article deleted Article kept
Create an article

24.7% (12,600) users

 N 99.3% (10,161) gone

 Y 0.7% (64) still here

 N 95.6% (2,271) gone

 Y 4.4% (104) still here

Edited existing

75.3% (38,374) users

 N99.1% (1,212) gone

 Y 0.9% (11) still here

 N97.4% (36,220) gone

 Y 2.6% (951) still here

Raw data of create/non-create, deleted/non-deleted
  • Create, deleted, gone, main: 10161
  • Create, deleted, not gone, main: 64
  • Create, non-deleted, gone, main: 2271
  • Create, non-deleted, not gone, main: 104
  • Non-create, deleted, gone, main: 1212
  • Non-create, deleted, not gone, main: 11
  • Non-create, not deleted, gone, main: 36220
  • Non-create, not deleted, not gone, main: 961
First action was not on a page in the main namespace
First page/First action Page deleted Page kept
Create a page

65.5% (9,667) users

 N 99.0% (892) gone

 Y 1.0% (9) still here

 N 97.3% (7,653) gone

 Y 2.7% (212) still here

Edited existing

34.5% (5,073) users

 N100.0% (117) gone

 Y 0.0% (0) still here

 N97.0% (4,777) gone

 Y 3.0% (143) still here

Raw data of create/non-create, deleted/non-deleted
  • Create, deleted, gone, non-main: 892
  • Create, deleted, not gone, non-main: 9
  • Create, non-deleted. gone, non-main: 7653
  • Create, non-deleted, not gone, non-main: 212
  • Non-create, deleted, gone, non-main: 117
  • Non-create, deleted, not gone, non-main: 0
  • Non-create, non-deleted, gone, non-main: 4777
  • Non-create, not deleted, not gone, non-main 143