Talk:Growth

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• 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)

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)