For peer production communities to be sustainable, they must attract and retain new contributors. Studies have identified social and technical barriers to entry and discovered some potential solutions, but these solutions have typically focused on a single highly successful community, the English Wikipedia, been tested in isolation, and rarely evaluated through controlled experiments. We propose the Newcomer Homepage, a central place where newcomers can learn how peer production works and find opportunities to contribute, as a solution for attracting and retaining newcomers. The homepage was built upon existing research and designed in collaboration with partner communities. Through a large-scale controlled experiment spanning 27 non-English Wikipedia wikis, we evaluate the homepage and find modest gains, and that having a positive effect on the newcomer experience depends on the newcomer's context. We discuss how this impacts interventions that aim to improve the newcomer experience in peer production communities.

翻译：为保障同伴生产社区的可持续性，必须吸引并留住新贡献者。现有研究已识别出参与面临的社会与技术障碍，并发现了一些潜在解决方案，但这些方案通常聚焦于单一高度成功的社区（如英文维基百科），仅在孤立环境中测试，且极少通过受控实验进行评估。我们提出"新手主页"方案——一个集中化平台，新手可在此了解同伴生产运作机制、发现贡献机会，旨在吸引并留住新用户。该主页基于现有研究成果构建，并与合作社区协同设计。通过涵盖27个非英文维基百科维基的大规模受控实验，我们评估发现该主页带来适度提升，且对新用户体验的积极影响取决于新手的具体情境。我们进一步探讨了这些发现对旨在改善同伴生产社区新手体验的干预措施的启示。