In-context help and onboarding

“In-Context Help and Onboarding” is a project to improve retention of new wiki editors by giving them short tutorials and other training experiences on subjects that research shows impact new-user success. “In context” here means that the system will train users while they work in the wikis, on issues relating directly to their current activity or situation. We might, for example, offer tutorials in response to user actions (e.g., clicking Edit for the first time), to events (e.g., a user’s first reversion) or at predefined milestones (the user’s nth edit). As a secondary benefit, we hope that this automated training system will make the work of volunteers who support new editors more manageable and reduce backlogs for patrollers.

The ultimate product—after appropriate small-scale experiments—might comprise a generalized Wikipedia Assistance service that communities can extend with training modules of their own devising. In-Context Help and Onboarding is a project of the Collaboration team.

This is an ongoing project; feel free to watchlist this page for updates.

= Background = In 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation began a significant program of research under the title New Editor Experiences. The final project report opens with this problem statement:"Wikipedia requires a constant influx of productive new editors from diverse backgrounds to sustain itself and increase its quality and balance. However, for nearly a decade, the size of the project’s contributor community has stagnated."The report goes on to document 11 “key findings” that analyze the top problems new editors face and recommend strategies for overcoming those obstacles. At the end of 2017, a cross-disciplinary team drawn from across the Foundation met in a series of workshops to explore ways to act on the report’s conclusions. After studying the 11 findings, the team selected four as the most important and actionable. To summarize those four prime findings: With these prime findings in hand, the workshop team next explored solutions. Of the many ideas discussed, In-Context Help and Onboarding was selected as one that best addresses the problems identified.
 * New editors’ greatest challenges are conceptual: they don’t understand wiki policies, including the “pillars” of Wikipedia like notability, neutrality and verifiability (finding #8).
 * Among new editors’ conceptual gaps is that they fundamentally don’t understand how the wikis are made—by volunteers like them, through community processes (finding #5).
 * In addition to the above conceptual issues, new editors struggle to master tools and editing processes. Meanwhile, the mechanisms that should make learning about those processes easier—notably talk pages and user help—are unintuitive and hard to discover (finding #9).
 * The last prime finding recommends an approach: the best way to build editors’ skills is through iterative, progressive learning, rather than through large, one-time downloads of information (finding #7).

= Principles & Approach = In-Context Help responds directly to the conceptual and informational gaps discussed above (findings #8, #9 and #5) The approach is progressive and iterative (finding #7). It augments the existing help-page system (finding #9). And the “push” nature of the interventions means this system has the potential to touch users broadly. In addition, the following key features and principles will guide the system’s design and ensure its success.
 * Applied learning: Users will be more receptive to information that relates directly to their current activities and problems. By applying tests to the user’s contribution, (e.g., by measuring that x amount of text was added with no citation) we can target lessons more precisely.
 * Effective communication. Written tutorials must be short and clear, distilling ideas to their essentials. Interactive training simulations are probably the best way to communicate processes.
 * Coordinate the interventions. Logic will be required to ensure that users don’t get multiple help messages in response to a single action or see the same messages over and over. Help topics might also be sequenced or graduated, so that the same situation triggers a more advanced tutorial once the user has met certain conditions.
 * Findable when needed. Some users may perceive just-in-time help as an interruption, to be dismissed summarily. As a backup, then, there should be a place where persistent New User Help modules can be accessed at a time of the user’s choosing (see mockup).
 * Minimize intrusion. Because of the proactive nature of the interventions, we need to design so as to minimize frustration. For example, a specific “Newcomer Mode” preference, which a user might accept with the understanding that it entails extra guidance, could reduce resistance among more independent editors while freeing us to design more impactful experiences for those who opt in.
 * Start small and iterate. Because we wanted to learn more about mid-sized wikis, the original New Editors Experience researchers focused on Korean and Czech Wikipedias . The In-Context Help and Onboarding system will likely be deployed and tested first on these two wikis, along with a few others yet to be determined.

= Timeline = In-Context Help and Onboarding is currently in early planning stages. Research and design will ramp up in July, 2018, and active product development should start some time around January, 2019.

= Feedback = We’re very interested to hear your thoughts on the project and approach outlined above. Where have you seen good examples of onboarding and automated help? What have you learned at your own wiki? Please add comments to the project talk page.

Right now, our focus is on thinking through the “content” that will best help new users succeed. See the draft list of what we’re calling “lessons” below. What does your experience tell you we can skip? What have we forgotten? We’d particularly be grateful for input from people who have experience supporting or teaching new wiki users. Please share your insights.

= A draft list of ‘lessons’ = Below is a very rough and preliminary list of possible training topics. What is missing? What can we skip? Remember, this system is designed to get new registrants past the first pitfalls in their user journeys; it’s not a comprehensive training course (though it can grow over time). Right now, we’re trying to identify the minimum list that can make a difference to users in their first month or two.

The “Library” links you’ll see below are to items in the Wikimedia Training Library. These links are provided only as examples of the type of content that a given lesson might include; we won’t  be using these modules verbatim.

Lessons are organized in groupings from 0-4. Think of these groups as corresponding to experience levels or, very roughly, sequence. E.g., the same user action might trigger a Group 1 lesson for a very new user (e.g., explaining the idea of talk pages) and a Group 2 lesson after the user has progressed (e.g., a talk page how-to). As the lessons get more advanced, the triggers for them will become more specific and targeted, so the early lessons will be the the most widely seen. Those examples are for Wikipedia but may be extendable to other wikis.

Group 0, Welcome

 * Welcome message:
 * Wikipedia is created by users like you—be bold (cf Library).
 * “You are now in Newcomer Mode” and chance to opt out.
 * Connect user to help resources: explain special Newcomer help links they’ll see in key places, direct to human help if available (e.g., Teahouse or Forum des nouveaux).

Group 1, Concepts everyone should know

 * Introduce user talk page (briefly) and importance of communicating with others.


 * Introduce notification badges and panels—“You’ve got messages!”
 * Neutral point of view (cf Library).
 * Verifiability and no original research (cf Library and Library).
 * Notability (cf Library and Library).
 * What is encyclopedic content—not a directory, newspaper, collection of docs… (cf Library).
 * Intro to editing—visual vs. source editing, switching between the two (cf Library and Library).
 * Importance of the edit summary (cf Library).
 * Don’t panic if someone edits or removes your work—be respectful (cf Library).

Group 2, Basic skills and more concepts

 * Intro do the article talk page (cf Library)
 * Talk page how-to—etiquette and basic Wikitext (cf Library and a wiki tutorial)
 * Content is free and must be copyright free (cf Library and Library)
 * You can watch a page (Watchlist) (cf Library)
 * The need for citations and selecting good sources (cf Library, Library and Library)
 * Make a citation, Wikitext / make a citation, Visual Editor

Group 3, Going deeper

 * Explain about template messages
 * Conflict of interest
 * Biographies of living persons

= Notes =