Wikimedia Engineering/Report/2013/January/summary


 * This content is prepared for inclusion in the January 2013 Wikimedia Foundation report. It is a shorter and simpler version of the full Wikimedia engineering report for January 2013 that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.

Editor engagement
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This month, the Editor engagement team (E2) continued to develop new features of the Notifications project (called "Echo"), and enabled a first experimental release on mediawiki.org. They worked on feature requirements, the user experience and developed interface and behind-the-scenes components. More features will be developed in January that are planned to be enabled on the English Wikipedia in early 2013. Help is welcome to test these features to provide feedback and find bugs.

A research study on the use of the Article Feedback tool on the English Wikipedia confirmed that many readers use this quality assessment feature, and a sizable number of them go on to register and become editors. Based on that research and other suggestions, new features were started to reduce the editor workload through better filters and simpler moderation tools. The activation of Article Feedback on all articles of the English Wikipedia is planned for March 2013. Some wikis like the German Wikipedia have started to evaluate this tool as well, while others like the French Wikipedia are discussing it.

No significant development activity happened on Page Curation (an interface for experienced contributors to review and improve newly created pages) following its release on the English Wikipedia, but its localization and adaptation for possible use on other wikis and in other languages is currently under consideration.

In December, the Editor engagement experiments team (E3) launched a new test aimed at Onboarding new Wikipedians; it offers an optimized task list immediately after sign up, inviting those without an idea of how to get started to choose an article and try their hand at editing. Development continued on the new account creation experience and a Guided Tours feature that which will be launched in January 2013.

To support these and future experiments, the EventLogging tool underwent heavy development, including the launch of a dedicated space on meta-wiki for defining the data collected in a public, collaborative manner. Development of a user metrics interface for programs also begun in order to standardize user metrics, and provide infrastructure and access to them.

Last, the E3 team collaborated with the Fundraising team to reach out to donors and readers as part of the annual fundraising campaign, via email and a "Thank You" banner which ran at the end of the year. -->