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Growth team updates #15
Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Variants C and D deployed
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.

Structured tasks: add a link
As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.

Learn more about the findings.

Community news

 * We recently deployed the Growth features to Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish Wikipedias. 18 wikis now have Growth features. Learn more about getting the features.
 * Have you recently checked if all interface messages are translated for your language?

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Wikimedia Technical Operations/ICU announcement
Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page Wikimedia Technical Operations/ICU announcement is available for translation. You can translate it here:
 * translate to മലയാളം
 * translate to ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്

ഈ താളിന്റെ മുൻഗണന ഇടത്തരം ആണ്. ഈ താൾ പരിഭാഷപ്പെടുത്തുന്നതിനുള്ള അവസാന തീയതി 2020-11-12 ആണ്.

An update will happen on the servers hosting the wikis. It will temporary affect how categories are sorting their contents. We plan to send a message to the wikis on 2020-11-13.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

You can change your notification preferences.

Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators&lrm;, 10:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16
Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Growth features show impact
Newcomer task experiments results

The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.

In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.

This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in: We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.
 * the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
 * the probability that they are retained as editors
 * the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.

You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page

General metrics

As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:
 * more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
 * more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
 * more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.

News for mentors
A separate list for workshops hosts

During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.

Claiming multiple mentees at once

Mentors can use to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news
The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Help:Cite
Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page Help:Cite is available for translation. You can translate it here:
 * translate to മലയാളം
 * translate to ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

You can change your notification preferences.

Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators&lrm;, 07:01, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17


Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks
Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.

Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features
Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.

We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.

We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.

Variant testing
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.

News for mentors
Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.

Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, , to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.

Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.36
Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.36 is available for translation. You can translate it here:
 * translate to മലയാളം
 * translate to ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

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Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators&lrm;, 22:26, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #18
Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks


"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.

News for mentors

 * We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
 * We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.

Community configuration


We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.

Scaling

 * Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,.
 * A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
 * After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19
Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

 * "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results.  So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement.  We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
 * "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles.  We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype.  We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors

 * The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test.
 * At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors

Community configuration

 * Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling

 * We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis.  The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons.
 * The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features.
 * A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
 * Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.

News for communities

 * Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
 * The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
 * Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
 * Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.37
Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.37 is available for translation. You can translate it here:
 * translate to മലയാളം
 * translate to ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

You can change your notification preferences.

Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators&lrm;, 23:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #20
Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits
As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement
Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
 * Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
 * Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
 * Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

News for mentors
Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!
 * The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
 * The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
 * We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
 * Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
 * We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Scaling
Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help
Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.

Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.38
Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.38 is available for translation. You can translate it here:
 * translate to മലയാളം
 * translate to ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

You can change your notification preferences.

Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators&lrm;, 02:36, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #21
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!

New project: Positive reinforcement

 * The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
 * We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
 * We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
 * The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
 * Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.

For mentors

 * We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
 * In the Mentor module, we now provide more information about the public nature of the mentors/newcomer relationship and the fact that talk pages are public.
 * We now allow newcomers to opt-in and opt-out of mentorship.

Scaling

 * "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
 * "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: . These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works.

Suggested edits

 * Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
 * Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
 * Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
 * User experience improvements ―   We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
 * Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
 * Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority.
 * Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.

Community configuration
Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
 * Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily.
 * Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)