Growth/Growth team updates/2022

Between January and May 2022, some team members transitioned to new positions and responsibilities. As a consequence, only the main events have been written down below.

Update 2022-02-25: positive reinforcement project beginning

 * Add an image
 * This feature was originally deployed on mobile on 2021-11-29. On 2022-01-28, we deployed a desktop version so that newcomers can use it on either platform.
 * On 2022-02-16, we added Spanish Wikipedia to the test. Now, 40% of newcomers on Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, and Czech Wikipedias are receiving "add an image" as their first task.
 * Usage of the feature remains low, but with some users completing many edits day after day. We are now analyzing the full conversion funnel in detail to understand how to increase participation.  We are also analyzing the captions users write to understand their quality and how those can be improved.
 * This feature will be used in a GLAM event by Wikimedia Argentina on March 7, to help museum professional illustrate articles in Spanish Wikipedia. If it goes well, it will be used in several subsequent events in Latin America.
 * Add a link
 * The first iteration of "add a link" was deployed on 2021-05-29, and it is now on 11 wikis. Our data analysis shows that this feature has a substantially positive impact on constructive article activation -- it increases the likelihood that a newcomer makes an unreverted edit to an article by 17% (details forthcoming).
 * In the past months, we have collected community feedback, usage data, and user feedback. We are now taking this information to make a series of improvements that we're calling "iteration 2".  After making these improvements, we'll plan to ask more Wikipedias to take on this feature.  The improvements underway include:
 * Avoid recommending links in certain sections
 * Recommend a maximum of three links per article
 * Giving users more options of what to do after completing an edit
 * We'll also be experimenting with whether having several screens of onboarding does, in fact, help newcomers complete the task correctly
 * Positive reinforcement
 * In building suggested edits, the Growth team has successfully caused more newcomers to make their first edits to Wikipedia. But our analysis shows that although the features increase how many people make their first edits, they do not additionally increase the share who come back and edit again another day (retention).  For this reason, we are prioritizing a project called "positive reinforcement", which is about helping newcomers be proud of their impact and be excited about coming back to continue their editing.
 * This project has three main ideas, and we'll begin conversations about them with communities:
 * Impact: the newcomer homepage contains a rudimentary impact module that we could improve to make more interesting.
 * Leveling up: it is important to communities that newcomers progress to more valuable tasks. For those who do many easy tasks, we want to nudge them toward trying more difficult tasks.
 * Personalized praise: research shows that praise and encouragement from other users increases newcomer retention. We want to think about how to encourage experienced users to thank and award newcomers for good contributions.