Talk:Growth

Interact with the Growth team | Community conversations | Newsletter | Contact page

• Discussions using Structured Discussions are at Talk:Growth/2023.
• Discussion related to the old Growth team is archived at Talk:Growth/Growth 2014.

Feedback on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditGrowthConfig

It's not clear from this page whether it's scope is per-user, per-wiki or something else. It needs to be more clearly an admin function. Also "privileged users" needs to link to explaine xactly what privileges are needed. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates - sorry for the delay in responding! This Special page is "per-wiki", and I agree we could make this more clear.

The Growth team is actually working on a Community Configuration project right now that will address UI improvements, along with some fundamental changes to this feature. You can check out the in-progress version of the new Special page that will eventually replace Special:EditGrowthConfig on Spanish Beta:

https://es.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Especial:CommunityConfiguration

Does that landing page help add clarity, or do you think we need to add additional guidance? KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Welcome emails to new users?

A few months ago I uploaded a crappy MP3 file of neighbourhood traffic noise to Soundcloud, and that triggered a sequence of emails from Soundcloud saying welcome and encouraging me to add more. Every commercial website of course does this - you sign up and they email you repeatedly until you unsubscribe Wikipedia doesn't seem to send new users automated emails even when we have their email addresses. Is there a reason we don't do this? Clayoquot (talk) 17:49, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

@Clayoquot, thanks for the feedback! I would love to focus on a series of onboarding emails! We have some initial project ideas documented here: Growth/Personalized first day/Engagement emails. And we even completed an initial Welcome email experiment.

And last month, Growth released a new feature as part of our Positive Reinforcement project that will generate a notification and an associated email (if the new account has an associated email address). But the email is just the standard Echo notification generated email, certainly not what I would call adequate onboarding.

My understanding was the Engagement email project was put on hold, partially because of the low emailability rates. Many new accounts don't associate an email address with their account, and those that do often never verify their email address.

That being said, I personally still think it's worth restarting the engagement emails project in the future. This next fiscal year, the WMF Product & Technology annual plan key results includes a focus on improving "constructive activation" (AKA the number of new accounts that try editing and don't have their edit reverted). And I think engagement emails could be one potential way to move the needle on constructive activation.

Do you have any thoughts on what we should include in onboarding / engagement emails? Should they be mainly focused on learning about how to get started editing? How can we strike the right balance between zero onboarding emails and the "they email you repeatedly until you unsubscribe" standard that is (unfortunately) the norm across the internet? KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed reply! The main things I was going to suggest were:

- Traffic statistics (I see you've already explored that).

- Explain what Watchlists are and encourage the person to add articles to their watchlist so they can see what other people are doing and join in conversations.

- Encourage the person to log in and check their watchlist regularly.

- Address privacy concerns that might make people hesitate to log in or to use watchlists. E.g. who can see what articles I add to my watchlist? Who can see what articles I visit and what search terms I use when I'm logged in?

Fix the bug in which if you change your preferences to be emailed whenever an article on your watchlist changes, it works for articles that are already on your watchlist. Currently it only works for articles that you add to your watchlist after changing the preference.

Regarding what should trigger emails, the default should be to email them whenever someone posts a message to their talk page or thanks them. Assume they don't log in and the only way the community can communicate with them is by email. Keep assuming this until they ask to stop being notified about talk page messages and thank-yous.

To encourage people to provide their email addresses when they register, tell them about the benefits. E.g. you'll be notified if an article you wrote is nominated for deletion. Also tell them about what Wikipedia usage data is and isn't associated with their email address.

Whatever you do, if someone has shown a talent for writing about a serious and under-served topic, please don't give them task suggestions that distract them from why they started editing. Clayoquot (talk) 01:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@Clayoquot, thanks for all of the suggestions; I agree those are all important concepts for new editors to learn about.

By Traffic statistics, do you mean like pageview stats? Something like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Impact/Clayoquot?

The Growth team has increased emailability rates by adding the following prompt to the Welcome survey after account creation (the prompt only displays if an email address wasn't already added):

We noticed you didn’t enter an email when creating this account. It’s highly recommended, since an email is needed for account recovery if you ever lose your password. NOTE: Your email address is not revealed when other users contact you.

But I agree there is more we can do to encourage people to associate email addresses with their accounts.

And your last point is critical in all of this; I want to ensure Growth features support newcomers that need the additional guidance and structure, but I also want to ensure this onboarding isn't distracting new editors that are self-motivated and passionate about contributing to an under-served topic. In fact, the Growth team has been thinking more about how we can help connect new editors with other community members and help highlight knowledge gaps, here's a related project we will work on soon: Community Updates. This will just be a small experiment, but hopefully a way for communities to highlight meaningful ways for new editors to get involved. We are early in planning the Community Updates experiment, so please let me know if you have any thoughts! KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:50, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Kirsten. Re "By Traffic statistics, do you mean like pageview stats?", yes. I had never seen the Special:Impact page before. I think that's the right idea. I'd prefer to see pageview stats in addition to (or instead of) than "Most viewed (since edit was made)" which presumably biases the results towards older edits. And I don't know why it maxes out at showing statistics for just 5 articles. I would expect to be able to click something to see statistics for all articles that I've edited.

It would be good for the Impact page to say whether the list of articles it shows includes articles in which my edits were reverted. If we have a way of telling people what percentage of their edits and/or what percentage of text they added has stuck, I think that would be useful information.

Regarding Community Updates, I'm totally meh on this. The English Wikipedia does not really have "events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives" that would be of broad interest to Learners. "Events", "campaigns", and "initiatives" might be familiar concepts to offline organizers and activists, but they seldom emerge from the way Wikipedia itself operates. I hope "Community Updates" doesn't become another Portals.

Many Wikiprojects used to do things like "collaboration of the month", which was great because it brought together newer and more experienced people who shared interests in a particular topic area. Unfortunately as I'm sure you're aware, most Wikiprojects have stagnated and some currently might be worse than nothing, e.g. WikiProject Cetaceans has a sign-up list but after someone signs up nothing happens. Is the WMF looking into things like trying to help rejuvunate Wikiprojects? Clayoquot (talk) 18:12, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Feedback on mentor growth feature

Hello,

I am using the mentor dashboard quite frequently as a mentor on the English Wikipedia (and I love it!). I currently have "about twice the average" of mentees assigned to me, and was wondering if it could be possible to add options to have more, say "about four times the average"? On average, I get asked four questions per week and have found myself able to answer more than that in a week.

Let me know if this is the wrong place to propose this :)

Cheers! Cocobb8 (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Cocobb8! You came to the right place, and I'm so glad to hear that you enjoy providing Mentorship!

We don't currently have a way to change to four times the average from within your settings, but it might be possible by editing the associated JSON configuration "weight" value. However, that's a protected page, and I'm not sure if that's actually a good suggestion at all... let's check in with @Martin_Urbanec_(WMF) to see if he has a suggestion.

Another way to double your questions is if we release mentorship to all new accounts created at English Wikipedia. :) OK, I'm joking, we won't fix your dilemma by essentially doubling the questions all English Wikipedia Mentors receive, but please let me know if you have any thoughts about how we can recruit more Mentors so we can eventually scale Mentorship to all newly created accounts at English Wikipedia (T323048). Currently only 50% of newly created accounts on English Wikipedia are connected with a Mentor.

I glanced at your talk page, and I love seeing the positive interactions with your Mentees, including the newcomer that thanked you for help (which unfortunately happens rarely) and the newcomer who just wanted to check if you were a bot. Thanks for providing such detailed and helpful responses to new editors!

I realize this didn't fully answer your question, but Martin, @Trizek (WMF), or I will get back to you soon with more info.

Cheers, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @KStoller-WMF, thanks so much for your quick response!
I do have some ideas on how to promote Mentorship on English Wikipedia, like adding that to the task center for "experienced editors", and perhaps mass-messaging users who are active at responding at the Teahouse/Help desk. However, these would need community consensus before they are used as ways to promote Mentorship.
I look forward to hearing for what others have to say about potentially increasing the amount of mentees assigned on English Wikipedia.
Thanks, Cocobb8 (talk) 14:16, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Cocobb8

The Growth team would love providing a mentor to each newcomer. However, it is very difficult to recruit more people to become mentors, and to keep these mentors active. Having some people like you helping us promoting the feature and creating a spirit of fellowship around this initiative would definitely help. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Trizek (WMF),
Thanks for the reply. I've started a thread on English Wikipedia's village pump to gather some ideas on how we can promote Mentorship there!
Cheers, Cocobb8 (talk) 13:25, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you!! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I've been so excited by your initiative that I forgot to say what seems like a no-brainer but, of course, let us know how we can help! :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:28, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll reach out if I do have some questions! For now, we'll just wait and see what the community thinks as well, and I'll post back here if it looks like anything is being decided . Cocobb8 (talk) 16:35, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I subscribed to the topic you started. Let's chat here if we need! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:24, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Untranslated fragment

Our user found an untranslated fragment on the Home page: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Непереведенный_фрагмент_(2961).png I don't know how to fix. THX. Lesless (talk) 19:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

@Lesless: Assuming that the fragment appears on ru:Служебная:Домашняя страница, you can open https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Служебная:Домашняя_страница?uselang=qqx to see message IDs instead of the Russian or English message texts. When you see for example (growthexperiments-homepage-tab), you can update/create the translation on translatewiki:MediaWiki:growthexperiments-homepage-tab/ru – remove the parenthesis, prefix with MediaWiki: and suffix with /ru for the Russian translation. (This qqx trick works on almost any MediaWiki page, not only on Growth Experiments pages.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:48, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

"У вас нет прав на выполнение действия «редактирование этой страницы»" Lesless (talk) 05:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Lesless, thank you for reporting it. This sentence is missing. If you like, I can post the translation at translatewiki.net.

Or you can create an account there (it is not a Wikimedia website), to become a translator. Any help would be welcomed as 11% of the interface for newcomers is not translated.

@Tacsipacsi, thank you for stepping in! :)

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 07:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Proposed edits feature

Hi, I was wondering if you've ever considered something like this (the section 'Proposed edits feature') with newer editors in mind Alexanderkowal (talk) 17:08, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alexanderkowal - Sorry, I read the thread you linked to weeks ago, but apparently never responded!

The 'Proposed edits feature' is an interesting idea, and it could certainly be helpful for a subset of newer editors who are aren't confident in the edit they are considering. But I can also see how it might also add complexity to the editing process and the patroller side of reviewing edits.

The Growth team currently plans to focus on providing newer editors with initial edit tasks that are structured and guided so they can successfully edit for the first time. We will also partner closely with the Editing team's Edit Check project that helps provide in-context policy and guidelines support.

You can read more about the Growth team Annual Plan, and our upcoming project: Constructive activation experimentation.

Our upcoming work clearly isn't the Proposed edits feature you are suggesting, but I do think it's work that is attempting to solve the same underlying issue: Newcomers often don't know how to contribute in a way that adheres to Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

Do you have any thoughts on the Constructive activation experimentation? Do you think that Edit Check and Structured Tasks are solutions that will help address the underlying issue? Are there aspects of the "Proposed edits feature" that more adequately addresses newcomer needs? KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

That's okay, no worries. Edit check is a really positive feature, my only gripe is that referencing is really unfamiliar for anyone who hasn't been to university/college, and they may not know the best places to look, like google scholar. In my opinion, the policy needs to really spell out how to reference (for each style), Wikipedia:Citing sources is inadequate in this regard (the only way I learnt was by copying how other people did it on the same page and asking family). The suggested edits are good, but new users are more likely to focus on what they're passionate about imo, and as such I haven't used them, but I'm sure they suit some editors. Structured tasks is really really good, I like it a lot. I do think proposed edits can add to this, but I understand that what you've done/are doing is a better and more targeted approach, and therefore a better use of resources.

I think proposed edits best impact would be regarding edit warring, do you have any ideas/actions on how to reduce that? In my mind it works really well, users are encouraged to use proposed edits when making an edit that is controversial or likely to be controversial. At the moment a user sees perhaps a perceived injustice and makes an edit, which is likely to be biased and worded badly due to their own personal bias, but nevertheless a progression; the user has achieved their goal of getting it published. The edit offends another user deeply, either due to its bad wording or content, and the user reverts; a regression, with this user furthering their goal of obstruction, possibly in defence of quality control. This frustrates the initial user as they had already achieved their goal, and the regression radicalises them, and they try to force it back the way it was. It's this tug of war facilitated by the binary of published and unpublished that creates edit wars. Proposed edits make the whole journey one constant progression and counter the binary nature of publishing (which usually facilitates "us" vs "them" conflict), provided the reverter collaborates, and the initial user knows of the various dispute resolutions like 3O and RfCs.

Idk, I'm not tech literate so don't have any idea of how many resources this would take up, and I'm still very new so I can't see all the possible implications of such a feature. Regardless, I'm really impressed with the work you guys are doing, and am satisfied problems are being addressed. Alexanderkowal (talk) 19:08, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alexanderkowal, thanks for the kind words and feedback!

The suggested edits are good, but new users are more likely to focus on what they're passionate about imo, and as such I haven't used them

This is a great point! It reminds me of research that was published last year. The results seem relevant to how Growth thinks about Suggested Edit topic selection, and the need for more specific and granular topic selection: "Accurate matching between expertise and the task… is among the most significant predictors of both contribution length and quality." The Wikimedia Foundation's Research team is currently investigating improvements to article topic filtering. Currently the topics available are broad and fairly generic, and we want to allow editors to filter Suggested Edits and Content Translation tasks to topics they are truly passionate about!

I think proposed edits best impact would be regarding edit warring, do you have any ideas/actions on how to reduce that?

Hmmmmm, I wish I did. It's a complex issue, and I generally focus more on the very early part of the editing funnel. If you want to chat with a team that thinks more about edit warring, the Moderator Tools team might be interested in discussing ideas further. Sam Walton is the Product Manager of that team, and as an Admin at English Wikipedia I imagine he has a more well-informed perspective on this than I do.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and feedback! KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Maybe new editors could be asked which topics they're interested in or select from a menu some topics and the suggested edits go off of that (and you can toggle random/personalised)? Thank you for engaging with me and being so kind Alexanderkowal (talk) 22:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@Alexanderkowal That sounds close to what we have in production on Wikipedia right now (see screenshot).

If you want to experiment with the Suggested Edits feature, you'll find it at: Special:Homepage. Older accounts don't have the Homepage enabled by default, but all Wikipedia editors can access it if they enabled "Display newcomer homepage" in their preferences: Special:Preferences.

That being said, I think the idea of providing a "randomize" option, or even a "personalized" option based on previous edits is an intriguing idea. I'm hoping that once the associated API offers more advanced topic filtering options we can consider further improvements to this selection menu.

One idea we've also experimented with is allowing editors to narrow down to two or more topics. In other words, we offer the first option below, but we don't currently offer the second option:

• Current UX: Suggestions will be based on 1 or more topic selected. So in this example screenshot, suggestions will be based on a "Architecture" or "Art" or "Biography (women)" topic search.
• Missing UX: Suggestions narrowed to all topics selected. So in this example screenshot, suggestions could be based on an "Architecture" and "Art" and "Biography (women)" topic search.

Ideally we can allow users to decide if they want the more expansive list of suggestions (the current UX) or allow for a more precise topic selection (the missing UX).

All this being said, we hope to eventually improve this topic selection menu, to include more topics and more precise filtering of suggestions, and I hope at that point we can also consider other "nice to have" ideas like randomization and personalization.

Thanks again for chatting through this and offering ideas! If you have any further feedback, I'm always curious and interested in how we can improve Growth features! We have a fairly small team, and many other features we maintain, so we have to make some difficult prioritization decisions, but I attempt to make sure we fit in the most impactful work. KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:59, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Suggestions for the Special:Homepage

I saw that eswiki already has the option in the preferences to activate "Show home page for new users"

Although I am no longer an experienced user, I have 2 points of view to give

• The first, if it is supposed to be new, I would like to know if they have planned that in the configuration it can be configured by default that it appears to all newbies without having to activate said option and that it is automatically deactivated as soon as certain parameters are met, I have more extensive things to say about this, but I limit myself to saying just that for now.
• The second thing is that the welcome page for newbies is still in the development phase, and the page Special:Homepage at first becomes inaccessible, and I activated it and I thought that when I touched the Wikipedia logo I was going to replace the general mainpage that is configured in MediaWiki:Mainpage so it is not very intuitive for a novice to be entering through the link and when entering the wiki it is not the predestined page for them.

At the moment I feel that they activated this function at a very early stage, and it is not very well-prepared for newbies who want to learn about basic tasks on Wikipedia

Greetings, Danielyepezgarces (talk) 05:02, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I was watching the previous thread and I see that yes for new users it is active by default but as an old user to test these features I click on the Wikipedia logo, and it takes me to the default page Danielyepezgarces (talk) 05:05, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello Danielyepezgarces

As the Homepage is not a page experienced users visit as their usual workflow, being surprised and having questions is common. And we are happy to answers your questions about it!

The Homepage is not a new thing anymore. it is activated for all newcomers at all Wikipedias for a few years now. At Spanish Wikipedia it was activated more than two years ago, and we have a good number of edits that were made using the suggested edits on the Homepage, so as questions asked by newcomers to their mentors.

We add new possibilities to this Homepage, the more recent being suggested edits. We will soon work on promoting community events.

The Homepage doesn't replace the actual homepage. Any new user who gets the Homepage as their default homepage will access it by clicking on their username. In short, we remplace the user page by a link to the homepage. Of course, the user page remains accessible.

Let me know if you have more questions! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:40, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Prevent mentees from asking duplicate questions within a few hours

Currently, the mentee can ask duplicate or similar questions to the mentor within a few hours (Example cases: Lovewyx, 呂哲元, Coidea and Jocelyn IU), and there is no measure to prevent them from doing so. This may cause annoyance for the mentor, as they receive several questions in a short period of time, and it can also make the talk page a bit messy, especially when it's not just one user doing this.

Therefore, it is suggested that the mentee be notified if they asked the question a few hours ago (maybe around 3-6 hours). The notification may remind them that they have already asked the question and encourage them to directly reply to their previous question, if they want to ask similar questions or follow up on their previous question. The text of the notification may be written like: "If your new question is related to your previous one, you are welcome to continue the conversation by directly replying to that earlier message. This helps keep things organized so your mentor can provide the most helpful response." etc.

This can not only avoid frustrating the mentor, but also help the newcomers learn more about how the Wikipedia discussion system works. cc @SunAfterRain: who flagged this issue. Thanks in advance! SCP-2000 (talk) 06:17, 7 July 2024 (UTC)