Growth/Newcomer experience projects

In order for everyone in the world to have access to all knowledge, we need people around the world to be able to participate in building that knowledge. No matter someone’s location, language, gender, device, income, technical skills, personality, or time constraints, we want them to be able to join in and find a way to be the best Wikimedian they can be.

Problems

 * Readers of Wikipedia don’t know that they can and should participate and share knowledge on Wikipedia by becoming newcomers.
 * Newcomers to Wikipedia lack ways to start participating in building open knowledge.  They try to participate, but are blocked by our single, complicated, open-ended experience -- barriers of entry that especially affect underserved populations.
 * Even when newcomers do succeed at first, they are not nurtured into taking the next steps to becoming part of our communities.

Hypothesis
If we direct newcomers to quickly make simple contributions in an onboarding experience that makes them proud of their impact and encourages their progress, then more readers, and more diverse kinds of readers, will become contributors -- especially amongst mobile users in emerging communities.

Objectives

 * Account creation;Internet users learn that they can contribute and are prompted to create an account.
 * Activation;Newcomers have fast, easy, and mobile-friendly ways to make their first edits.
 * Retention; Newcomers are proud of their impact, leading them to come back.

Account creation

 * Encourage donors to create accounts through Thank you pages & banners to try editing and contribute in a constructive way.
 * Run ads on-wiki or off-wiki & welcome emails and have new people try editing and will contribute in a constructive way.

Activation

 * Build an “add an image” structured task, new kinds of newcomers will complete more suggested edits on mobile.