Aishik Rehman
Growth team newsletter #17
editWelcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
editAdd a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Moving forward: more wikis to get the features
editLast November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
Variant testing
editAs mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
News for mentors
editMentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}
, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Congratulations!! Top Winners of Feminism and Folklore 2021
editDear @User:Aishik Rehman,
Congratulations!! You emerged as [2nd] out of the top 18 most articles written during the Feminism and Folklore 2021 writing contest in the Bangaladesh language community. We are thrilled that you participated in this year's campaign to share amazing photos via the competition for free use.
Kindly fill Kindly fill this form soon for the next steps. We will require all the necessary details on coupons within (7) days thus 4th May 23:00hrs UTC to enable us to send your prize in time. Once again, CONGRATULATIONS!!.
Joy Agyepong (talk) 05:16, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Program Coordinator
Wiki Loves Folklore International Team 2021
Top Language Winner of Feminism and Folklore 2021 for your Country
editDear @User:Aishik Rehman,
Congratulations!! You placed [1st] best language contributor on articles written in your local community during the Feminism and Folklore 2021 writing contest for the Bangaladesh Language. We are thrilled that you participated in this year's campaign to share amazing content via the competition for free use.
Kindly fill this form soon for the next steps. We will require all the necessary details on coupons within (7) days thus 4th May 23:00hrs UTC to enable us to send your prize in time. Once again, CONGRATULATIONS!!.
Joy Agyepong (talk) 06:03, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Program Coordinator
Wiki Loves Folklore International Team 2021
Growth Newsletter #18
editWelcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
edit"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
News for mentors
edit- We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
- We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.
Community configuration
editWe are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
Scaling
edit- Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
- A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
- After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2021 - ta.wiki
editHi,
I have made a request on User talk:Ле Лой and it was Is is possible to edit condition on ta? I'd like to add this template on each submitting article's talk page?.
I don't know the request have been made. Also, here another jury joined and he need access on fountain tool.
Could you me a guide where I can meet those needs? --AntanO 05:46, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @AntanO: Yeah! It is possible to change conditions and add new jury in fountain. But the rights are limited to administrators (sysops) only. I can see that you have administrator rights on Tamil Wikipedia, which means you can do it yourself. You don't need to communicate with Ле Лой.Hirok
Raja 05:57, 1 September 2021 (UTC)- I tried, but I didn't find the way to edit. Would you help me on that? Thanks --AntanO 11:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @AntanO: You can try this link. Aishik Rehman (talk) 11:56, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- I tried, but I didn't find the way to edit. Would you help me on that? Thanks --AntanO 11:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you! It works. --AntanO 12:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I need another help. The tool does not accept to submit expanded article. Conditions on the tool seems ok. Is there anything to correct? --AntanO 17:14, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @AntanO: There was some misinformation on the contest rules page. In this edition we will only accept new articles. However, if someone has already (September 1, 2021) expanded, you can accept his article. We've modified the rules page and request you to follow it in all subsequent works. Aft, we apologize for the mistake! Aishik Rehman (talk) 17:28, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you for the prompt action. --AntanO 17:46, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Hi, sorry for making trouble again. So far, participants or jury are unable to add expanded articles. We have changed the rules as per main update on Meta. If you could add two expanded articles on behalf of them, that much be appreciated. Users and expanded articles are as follows:
- User:Rsmn - ஆப்கானிசுத்தானில் பெண்கள் உரிமைகள்
- User:Sridhar G - அமிலத் தாக்குதல்
--AntanO 05:32, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- @AntanO: You can change the configuration of the fountain tool for a while. Change the configuration in such a way that there are no barriers to accepting articles. Then with the submission of two articles quickly brought the configuration back to the present state. You can let me know when you're done. Thank you. Aishik Rehman (talk) 15:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you. I was able to add those 2 articles. --AntanO 00:43, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2021 - as.wiki
editFountain link is not working for Assamese Community. Can I create a new link? দিব্য দত্ত (talk) 06:57, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @দিব্য দত্ত: You don’t need to create a new link. Go to 'this link and approve it. Let me know if there are any problems. Hirok
Raja 07:03, 1 September 2021 (UTC)- @Aishik Rehman: we are unable to approve as it's continuously showing 403 error.-Nayan j Nath (talk) 07:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Nayan j Nath @দিব্য দত্ত Then create another new one. Be sure to enter wlwsa2021-as2 in the URL field. You can also add me for further supervision. Aishik Rehman (talk) 07:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Aishik Rehman: we are unable to approve as it's continuously showing 403 error.-Nayan j Nath (talk) 07:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- thnks, Its working now. দিব্য দত্ত (talk) 07:38, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
Mark
editHi, I hope you are fine. Here you can see marks are higher than number of articles. I think that it counts other jury's mark as separate count since he marked 32 articles. What shall we do? --AntanO 03:40, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- @AntanO: It's not a problem. We will determine the winner based on the number of accepted articles, not the marks. Aishik Rehman (talk) 13:20, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks. Noted. --AntanO 02:24, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
#WPWPCampaign2021: Learning and evaluation
editHello Aishik Rehman,
Many thanks for participating in the WPWP campaign.
We are glad about the level of participation, this year and we are excited to inform you that over 900 volunteers around the world added photos to more than 250,000 articles in 298 languages Wikipedia. This year, we surpassed the 2020 edition's milestone by over 170%.
We are in the process of evaluating the WPWP campaign this year and we need your help. We'd love to get your feedback. Your feedback will allow us to better meet your expectations for the campaign in the next editions.
Please complete a brief survey so that we may learn about your participation in the campaign, strengths, challenges and your expectations. This information will enable us to improve the next editions of the Campaign.
Follow this link to the Survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeL9BORQ94GtN6mjS4-U77N7-BIuxDGl1cmhwKzKSijc9lrcA/viewform
Or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeL9BORQ94GtN6mjS4-U77N7-BIuxDGl1cmhwKzKSijc9lrcA/viewform
Thank you in advance for taking this survey.
Kind regards,
Tulsi Bhagat [ contribs | talk ]
Communication Manager, WPWP Campaign
-- Message sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:05, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
Blanking
editCan you please explain why you blanked an entire thread here? Please use an edit summary, or at least explain in some way or form in why you're blanking that entire section (any language is fine). I'm assuming good faith here, but once you start to slip away and keep edit warring, then it becomes a concern. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:37, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #19
editWelcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
edit- "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
- "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.
News for mentors
edit- The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [1]
- At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [2]
Community configuration
edit- Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.
Scaling
edit- We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [3]
- The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [4][5]
- A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
- Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.
News for communities
edit- Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
- The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
- Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
- Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Greats
editHow I can be a wikipedian? 103.124.251.159 20:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
- @103.124.251.159: You are welcome to contribute to Wikipedia. Read the details from this page, don't hesitate to let me know if you have trouble understanding somewhere. Aishik Rehman (talk) 06:21, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
joining WAM-2021
editSir,how I can join WAM-2021. Asia a new comer it’s not easy told understand me but I wish to join.Help Please...
- @Momtaz Chanchal: Which Wikipedia community do you want to participate in? Bengali, English or any other? Aishik Rehman (talk) 06:13, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Re:Deletion
editHi, sorry but I'm not an admin on meta-wiki, please contact a meta-wiki sysop to request the deletion of those pages :) Best regards --Superpes15 (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #20
editWelcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Suggested edits
editAs of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.
Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.
Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.
"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.
Positive reinforcement
editOver the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:
- Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
- Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
- Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.
This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
News for mentors
edit- The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
- The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
- We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
- Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
- We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.
Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!
Scaling
editPreviously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.
How to help
editDo you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.
Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #21
editWelcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
edit- The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
- We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
- We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
- The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
- Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.
For mentors
edit- We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
Scaling
edit- "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
- "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [6]
Suggested edits
edit- Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
- Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
- Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
- User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
- Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [7]
- Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.
Community configuration
editCommunities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [8]
- Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [9]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Join Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2022
editHello Aishik Rehman,
Thank you for participating in the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign last year.
We are glad to inform you that this year's edition started on 1 July, 2022. You are invited to participate in the campaign again to help improve the quality of Wikipedia articles with photos and contextual images. For more information about the campaign and how to participate, please visit the campaign page here.
If you have any questions or query please feel free to contact the organizing team, leave a message at the campaign's talkpage or send an email to wpwpcampaign gmail.com.
Kind regards, --Ammarpad (talk) 21:27, 5 July 2022 (UTC) (On behalf of the Organizing Team, WPWP Campaign 2022).
Growth team newsletter #22
editWelcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
editAs of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
- About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
- Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.
We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.
If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.
Ongoing projects and explorations
editWe are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.
We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.
Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).
Experiments analysis
editAdd a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:
- Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
- They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
- The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).
Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.
- Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
- Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.
News for mentors
editA new system for the mentors list
The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.
At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.
The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [10][11]
Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.
Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.
A tip for mentors
Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.
And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.
Other improvements
Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:
- While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [12]
- Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [13]
- Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [14]
Recent changes and fixed bugs
edit- We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [15]
- Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [16]
- Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [17]
- In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [18]
Have a question? A suggestion?
editPlease let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #23
editWelcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!
Highlights
edit- Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
- Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.
Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test
editThe goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.
Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.
This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.
Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback
editAfter the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.
We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
- Patroller fatigue:
- By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
- Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
- Add a Link
- Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
- The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
- The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
- Ein Bild hinzufügen
- Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [19]
- Add a Link
The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
Recent changes
edit- All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [20]
- The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [21][22]
- Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.
News for mentors
edit- All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
- We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
- Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting
Special:MentorDashboard
. - Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
- A new special page —
Special:ManageMentors
— now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
- The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [23]
Deployments
edit- Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [24]
Improving this newsletter
editWe plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Membership renewal
editDear Wiki Project Med Supporter, you are receiving this message as you were a member in 2022. As 2023 approaches it is time to renew. There are no associated costs for active participants. We are close to elections and only members can nominate themselves for the board and vote!
ReJoin Wiki Project Med Foundation |
---|
Thanks again :-) Avicenno and the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 19:56, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #24
editWelcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomer experience projects
editThe Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:
- Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
- Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
- "Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
- Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.
Newcomer tasks
edit- Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [25]
- The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [26]
Mentorship
edit- When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [27]
- Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [28]
- Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
- Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
- If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.
Other news
edit- In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [29]
- This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.
Translations
edit- Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
- Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations
14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Your signature
editHello Aishik Rehman, images should not be used in user signatures, it can lead to a whole array of problems. Please adjust your signature to no longer media in it. — xaosflux Talk 10:29, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia Asian Month 2022 eligible participants list.
editHi @Aishik Rehman,
I am Joyce, from the WAM2022 international team. Thank you for organizing the WAM campaign. I would like to let you know that. I had send out both the special barnstars and regular barnstars based on the fountain tool list you provided in the Ambassadors list. I send the special barnstart to user Shahadat WiKi, and Moheen, regular barnstars to other participants who score at least 3 or above 3.
This year, edits with 3,000 bytes on exisiting article also counts, let me know if there are other particiapants who are eligible for a regular barnstar as well. All the best, and see you in the next WAM campaign. all the best, Joycewikiwiki (talk) 03:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia Asian Month 2022 Survey Joycewikiwiki (talk) 03:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #25
editWelcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Celebrations
editLeveling up release
- We released Leveling up features to our pilot wikis on March 22 for an initial A/B test.
- In this test, we use post-edit dialogs (pop-ups shown after publishing an edit) and notifications to encourage new editors to try new types of newcomer-friendly suggested edits.
- We are closely monitoring the short term impact of this feature as well as the longer term effect on newcomer productivity and retention. If the experiment shows positive results, we will release this feature to more wikis.
5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February
- In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
- Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.
Recent changes
edit- Einen Link hinzufügen
- Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [30][31]
- We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
- The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [32]
- Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
- Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.
Upcoming work
edit- Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
- IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – We will support this project for all Growth Team maintained products and extensions that may be affected by IP Masking. [36]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #26
editWelcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
One million Suggested Edits
editWe passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!
- The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
- Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
- Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
- Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)
Positive reinforcement
editPositive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.
- The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [37]
- The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
- The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.
Add an image
edit- We are creating a new section-level variation of the “add an image” task. We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway. [38]
Other updates
edit- We are progressively releasing Add a link to more wikis. [39]
- After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated Thanks usage on the wikis. There is no evidence that thanks increased after the feature was added on more pages.
- We helped with code review for the 2023 Community Wish to add Notifications for user page edits. [40]
- We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our Growth’s Community events report.
What's next for Growth?
edit- We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Join Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2023
editHello Aishik Rehman,
Thank you for participating in the previous editions of Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign.
We are glad to inform you that this year's edition started on 1 July, 2023. You are invited to participate in the campaign again to help improve the quality of Wikipedia articles with photos. For more information about the campaign and how to participate, please visit the campaign page here.
If you have any question or need more information, please either contact the organizing team, leave a message at the campaign's discussion page or send an email to wpwpcampaign gmail.com.
Kind regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC) (On behalf of the Organizing Team, #WPWP Campaign 2023).
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
editThis newsletter combines content from both June and July, due to a delay in sharing out the previous newsletter.
Updates:
- New Movement Charter content published: The Committee published new draft chapters on the Global Council, Hubs and the Glossary. You are invited to share your feedback or ask any questions you may have to the Committee before September 1, 2023 on the following talk pages:
- Revised draft chapters published on Meta: The Committee has shared the revised draft chapters: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities intentions statement. These revisions are based on the community feedback received in November-December 2022.
- Ratification Methodology community feedback: The summary of community feedback on the proposed methodology for the ratification of the Charter is on Diff.
- Listen to the WikiAfrica Hour #46: Africa and Movement Charter, where MCDC members Anass Sedrati and Georges Foudoup talk about Movement Charter, its aims and objectives, and the relevance to the African community.
- MCDC member’s are busy participating in various community events to discuss Movement Charter. Manavpreet Kaur, a member of the Global Council and Roles and Responsibilities Drafting Groups joined the EduWikiConference 2023. The MCDC support staff Ramzy Muliawan shared updates about the charter at WikiNustantara 2023 in Banjarmasin, Indonesia (@wikimediaid on Twitter). The Wikimedia communities in Indonesia were engaged by Movement Charter Ambassador Arcuscloud in the last round of community conversations.
- Learn about MCDC’s work in May & June: as usual, the update includes information about the meetings held by the Committee in this month, as well as about the work that was completed and the ongoing work & discussions.
What’s coming up?
- Join the live launch party: The Drafting Committee is hosting a launch party on July 30th at 14.00 UTC to celebrate the new drafts, introduce them to the community and give space for sharing thoughts and feedback. Register here to receive a Zoom link to the launch party.
- Movement Charter Community Conversation grants are open for individuals or groups who want to organize conversations about the Charter content. Talk to us if you need any support on the MS Forum! Apply for a grant before Jul 30, 2023.
- Wikimania 2023: Wikimania 2023: Members of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee are excited to be attending Wikimania Singapore in August, to speak to and hear from you in person (and hybrid) about the four drafts and the Charter in general.
- Community events: MCDC members will be present in the CEE Meeting in September in Georgia to discuss the Charter content with the CEE and CA communities. In addition, the MCDC prioritizes participation in the conferences planned for 2023 to continue conversations on the content of the Charter with the communities: WikiConvention Francophone, WikiWomen Camp, WikiIndaba Morocco, WikiConference North America, GLAM Wiki Conference, among others.
Subscribe to this newsletter on Meta wiki
--12:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC).
Growth team newsletter #27
editWelcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Annual plan for Growth
editWe shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.
Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.
After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:
- Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
- Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.
Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.
Suggested edits
editWe released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.
Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [41]
Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.
Mentorship
editThe Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.
More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [42]
The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.
Positive reinforcement
editWe will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.
In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.
Growth contributes to IP Editing migration
editThe Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:
- the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
- change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [43]
Community Configuration 2.0
editWe are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:
- We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [44]
- We have started to investigate design improvements. [45]
- We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [46]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter: August 2023
editAktualisierungen
- Community consultation: The community consultation on the Global Council, Hubs, and the Glossary drafts is ongoing. We value your input, if you have not already, please take a moment to review the draft chapters and share your thoughts with the MCDC. We’ve posed open questions we would like your opinion on. Feel free to engage in a way that is most comfortable for you and your community. Learn more on our Diff blogs about the Global Council and Hubs.
- Launch Party: On July 30 we hosted a Launch Party to share the Global Council and Hubs draft chapters. It was an inspiring event where we had the opportunity to listen to your feedback and address some of your questions. If you missed it, you can catch the recording on YouTube.
- Community Conversations: We want to hear from as many people as possible. On July 16, the SWAN meeting opened its doors and offered an opportunity to interact with the MCDC members regarding the new drafts of the charter. Notes are available here. On July 28, a regional conversation with the Francophone community was held. Here comes a short summary here in English and French. Additionally, on August 2 we had a fruitful conversation with the LATAM region.
- MCDC’s Work in July: As usual, the update includes information about the meetings held by the Committee in this month, as well as about the work that was completed and the ongoing work & discussions.
Upcoming
- Join the MCDC at Wikimania: Whether you’ll be at Wikimania 2023 in person or joining virtually, there are a few events that we would like to invite you to. Please drop by for a casual conversation. We would love to connect to workshop any ideas together. Drop in, get a sweet treat, and share your thoughts with us! Register and see below for an overview of our time together:
- Tuesday, August 15
- Wednesday, August 16
- Thursday, 17 August
- : Movement Charter Content Discussions (Room 310)
- A regional call tailored for the MENA region will be conducted in Arabic on September 2 at 17.00 UTC. Kindly indicate your interest to attend this meeting.
Subscribe to this newsletter on Meta-wiki
MCDC Support Team, 23:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #28
editWelcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community configuration 2.0
edit- Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
- Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
- Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.
IP Masking
edit- The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
- Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)
Mentorship
edit- We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
- We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
- Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.
Scaling Growth features
edit- We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
- We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
- At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.
Other news
edit- We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
- You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
- After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Growth team newsletter #29
editWelcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community Conversations
editThe Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.
This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.
Impact Module
editAt the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [47]
Add a Link
editWe released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [48] [49]
We have a few Wikipedias remaining:
- German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
- There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.
Community Configuration
edit- We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [50] 🖂
- Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
- A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
- Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.
Mentorship
editWhen a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [51]
We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [52]
We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [53]
It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [54]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
General Assembly LSP 2024
editDear All, We will be holding our general assembly for 2022 in February 2024 online. If you wish to participate as a member of our user group, you need to be formally a member of our association. There will be another general assembly online for 2023 in June 2024, and we will then have been able to bridge the gap of our late general assemblies.
Please fill out our membership formular here.
We are looking for members on our board who have specific competences in budget planning and finances as well as fundraising, as well as strategic planning. If you have these competences please feel free to send us your appplication and motivation letter by mail at [email protected].
Warm regards,
PS : if you do not wish to be contacted again please delete your name from this list : Les sans pagEs#Membership
Thank you for being a Movement Charter Ambassador
editMovement Charter Ambassador Program 2023 - Second round of community consultations | ||
A big thank you again, Aishik_Rehman, for helping mobilize your community to understand the work of the MCDC and providing valuable input on the Movement Charter drafts. Your work and the feedback from your community help us write a better Charter for the whole Wikimedia Movement! Many thanks! |
Wikimedia Medicine membership renewal 2024
editMembership renewal
editDear Wiki Project Med Supporter, you are receiving this message as you were a member in 2023. As 2024 approaches it is time to renew. There are no associated costs for active participants. We are close to elections and only members can nominate themselves for the board and vote!
ReJoin Wiki Project Med Foundation |
---|
Thanks again :-) Avicenno and the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 19:51, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
General Assembly les sans pagEs Feb 7th 2024
editDear members of the user group des sans pagEs,
Our general meeting will take place on 7 February online. As a member of the user group, you can attend this AGM by joining the association here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/134fW1N1yuQfsHURBfr8Moa3eAr3TBTzPoWEXqCCTrkg/viewform?edit_requested=true You will need to pay a membership fee to join the association, and your membership will be validated by the committee as soon as payment is received by bank transfer.
The membership fee is CHF 200 for external members who are not involved in the project. For volunteers who give their time to the project, the price is free according to their means. The indicative fee, based on what is charged by national chapters, varies between 12 euros for France and 50 Swiss francs for Switzerland.
Natacha LSP Director of sans pagEs Natacha LSP (talk) 18:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, April 2024
editThe Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Community Configuration
editGrowth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig
. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
Experiment Results
editAdd a Image experiment analysis results
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
- The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
- The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
- The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
- A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
Personalized praise experiment results
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)
English donors encouraged to try editing
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)
Future work
editAnnual Plan
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
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18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Offline MediaWiki Code Editor
editIf you are still interested in an offline editor for Wikipedia please consider the following as a probable solution to the problem, at least for Windows users: Offline MediaWiki Code Editor. The application is bilingual English/Spanish, and I'm working to produce a version in Esperanto. Tonygarfume (talk) 03:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Join Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2024
editHello Aishik Rehman,
Thank you for participating in the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign in one of our previous editions.
The 2024 edition has just started. We are glad to invite you to participate in the campaign again this year to help improve the quality of Wikipedia articles with photos and other media files. For more information, please visit the campaign page here.
If you have any questions, please feel free to a leave comment at the campaign's talkpage, contact members of the organizing team, or send an email to wpwpcampaign gmail.com.
Kind regards, --Ammar 14:51, 2 July 2024 (UTC) (For Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2024 Organizers)
Test and co-create a new feature for reusing references with different details
editHi,
this is Lina and Eline from the Technical Wishes product team at Wikimedia Deutschland. We hope this message finds you well!
We are currently working on a solution to help Wikimedians easily reuse references with different details – a problem related to several Community Wishlist Survey wishes (partially) supported by you (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4).
We want to invite you to a user testing session. During the session, you can test a prototype for Visual Editor and provide your feedback. Sessions will take 30–45 minutes, compensation is available. If you are interested, please sign up here (privacy policy).
Please note that most likely, we won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. We will try to test with a diverse group of wiki contributors. If you’re a fit, we will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.
Hope to hear from you soon, and please let us know if you have any questions!
Growth News, July 2024
editCommunity Configuration
editThe Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration
.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig
. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.
If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!
Current work
editNewcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Future work
editIncrease constructive activation on mobile
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Stay informed
editGrowth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)