Growth/Non-editing participation

This is a potential project that is not currently prioritized, but is being considered as part of Growth's 2023-2024 Annual Plan.

Summary
Successful editors tend to build their “contribution skills” through iterative, progressive learning in safe spaces where the stakes are lower (New Editor Experiences). The Growth team hypothesizes that if we find ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia in an easy, low-risk way, that some of these readers will eventually funnel into contributing to the Wikimedia movement in more meaningful ways.

The Growth team will utilize Non-editing participation research to guide this project.

Current status

 * April 2023: WMF Annual planning discussions
 * June 2023: Initial non-editing participation research started (T337969)

Hypothesis
The Growth team is guided by the Annual Plan of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Product & Technology department's Objectives and Key Results. This hypothesis and associated project relates to the Reading and media experience objective.


 * Reading and media experience objective: Produce a modern, relevant and accessible reading and media experience for our projects.
 * Key Result 3: Deepen reader engagement with Wikipedia via 0.05% of unique devices engaging in non-editing participation.

This key result focuses on deepening reader engagement, while also exploring ways in which readers can contribute to our projects that are not editing pages. We hypothesize that there are people who are interested in getting involved with the wikis but for whom editing of any kind is too big of a leap. We want those people to have a way to get more deeply involved, perhaps becoming more committed readers, or eventually becoming comfortable enough to edit. "Non-editing participation" refers to any actions users can take on the wikis besides editing (we are also counting edits to discussions as 'editing'). While our websites don't have any of this, our apps do, in the form of reading lists or sharing content to social media. This work could include letting users configure their own personal reading experience, or could also focus on sharing content across the wiki, curating, and suggesting content to others. The KR is inclusive of work on the mobile and desktop websites and the apps. For mobile and desktop it may include the adoption of some non-editing participation functionality that exists on the apps. For the apps, it may include improving on existing functionality or building out new ideas. The number 0.05% is approximately the ratio of editors to unique devices -- so perhaps in the first year of this feature set, we see a similar ratio for non-editing participants, which would eventually increase to greater than the number of editors in the future.

Potential Growth team hypothesis related to WikiExperiences 2.3 Key Result:
If we add new reader-centered modules to the homepage, readers will be more likely to participate in the wikis in non-editing ways.

We want to

 * Explore the needs of the 19% of users who create accounts to “read Wikipedia” [account creation reason].
 * Create opportunities to participate in the wikis in small "non-editing" ways that feel safe and accessible to new account holders (creating reading lists or sharing section of articles).

We don't want to

 * Discourage newcomers from editing in traditional ways.
 * Create more work for patrollers or experienced editors.
 * Create confusion about Wikipedia's purpose or values.