Growth/Newsletters/13

Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth>mw:Special:MyLanguage/Growth|Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in midsize>mw:Special:MyLanguage/New Editor Experiences/Midsize Wikipedias|mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Join the conversation: structured tasks
We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued, with about 900 newcomers making over 5,000 suggested edits so far. Now that we've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks", which would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices. Certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured in the past (such as adding categories through HotCat), but we are now thinking about how to structure the editing of articles, so that newcomers can make substantial content additions, especially from their mobile devices.

Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community and to translate the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation through June 18.

Expanding to more wikis
We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.

In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features. We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities.

Please see this page for a translatable summary of Growth features that you can share with your communities, and contact us to begin the process!

Other updates
Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.


 * In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
 * In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations, in which we learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test.  See the full results here.
 * We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks, which will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
 * Next, we will be moving on toward testing new configurations of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.