Growth/Communities/Community events reports

This page lists community events Growth team members and supporters attended, and where Growth features were presented or mentioned. Notes listed below reflect the opinion of the attendees.

Wikimedia Hackathon, May 2023
Several Growth team engineers attended Wikimedia Hackathon. Growth team engineers hosted or assisted with the following sessions:


 * Community configuration – letting communities take control by JSON configuration
 * LLMs, ChatGPT, machine learning tools, etc
 * Using Pixel tool for visual regression
 * Improve your technical writing

WikiConference India 2023, April 2023
Report by Ankan (WMF)

Ankan participated in the WikiConference India 2023 in Hyderabad, India, where he had a meeting with the Wikimedia Bangladesh chapter regarding their new programs. Two board members commented that conducting a workshop for the experienced contributors (who will be the future trainers for newcomers, and conduct workshop) would be helpful as the features for newcomers have been updated in the recent time by the growth features. So they believe that it is important to ensure the trainers know about these, and can comfortably conduct outreach events. Another conference participant, who organizes education programs often, got interested knowing the growth features.

The growth features were shown to these contributors during the conference. One of the takeaways from this conference is the fact that many community members (including some active members) still don't have a clear idea about the growth features.

Wiki for Human Rights campaign + Newcomer Tools, April 2023
Report by KStoller-WMF

Growth team representatives, KStoller-WMF and Martin Urbanec (WMF), participated in a Let’s Connect virtual learning clinic. The focus of the session was to share effective strategies for retaining and re-engaging new editors during and after the Wiki for Human Rights campaign. The session was held on Apr 11, 2023 and was open to all Wiki for Human Rights campaign organizers in the Central and Eastern Europe region and in other regions who are participating in this year's campaign.

The Growth team shared a presentation about Newcomer tools for campaign participants. This presentation is also available in Spanish, Arabic, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

After the presentation, some questions were asked about setting up Mentorship on wikis without the feature enabled. So we shared further information about Mentorship features for workshop or campaign organizers, along with an invitation to reach out to Trizek (WMF) for more personalized assistance. One current mentor expressed frustration about some newcomers "spamming" talk pages with repetitive questions or requests for assistance when they are violating guidelines. But in general reception was positive, and the post presentation feedback about what was learned in the session included:


 * Growth team tools are super cool
 * I'm really interested in the mentorship tool!
 * I plan to adjust my preferences to have the growth experience features and support new editors.

Wikiconvention Francophone, November 2022
Report by Trizek (WMF)

Growth hosted a presentation of Growth features evolution across the 5 last years. The room was too small for the number of people who attended.

I also attended sessions about newcomers experiences, newcomers feedback, help pages, improving best practices, etc.

Main takeaways from the entire conference:


 * Most people were not aware of what we achieved over the 5 last years.
 * Most people were stunned by what we achieved, and how good our data is.
 * Suggested copyedit raised a lot of eyebrows as there are several standards for French language. As the event was also about minor languages spoken across the francophonie, some users were concerned of being left aside because no dictionary exists for their language.
 * People asked for a per-country filter, to help their workshops.
 * Non-Wikipedia wikis asked when specific task for their needs would be available, or if an option would be provided to allow them to create their own tasks.
 * Several users were looking for a mentor. It was particularly true for people who created their account a while ago, but haven't yet edited "for real". As their account is too old, they can't find their mentor. Going through preferences wasn't easy for them.
 * While translations are popular, there is no way to ask a question to your mentor while you translate an article. And you mentor can't access your translation.

Mentorship was added to https://ary.wikipedia.org/.

Report by Dyolf77 (WMF)

WikiIndaba 2022, November 2022
Report by Dyolf77 (WMF)

A dedicated table for a live demonstration of the tools for experienced Wikimedians.

WikiArabia 2022, October 2022
Report by Dyolf77 (WMF) Growth team tools for newcomers was presented in a session. The session was delayed and was rescheduled in parallel with another session in the first day of the conference:
 * Majority of attendees was new editors who wanted to manage workshop with newcomers;
 * One mentor was able to join the session;
 * Questions and feedback from attendees:
 * "Great tool, I wish I had the same assistance at my early times on wikis!";
 * "We want mentors for specific mentees!";
 * "In a workshop, how to assign mentors for the learners without disturbing them with changing their initial mentors?"
 * From the mentor: "It will be very helpful to offer a VRTS like system to handle questions from newcomers."

Wikimedia Spain annual meeting
Report by Zapipedia (WMF) In November 2022, WMES celebrated the ninth edition of their annual conference. It was an in-person meeting.

Growth hosted a presentation of Growth features during the event:
 * It was the last session of the day and the room was crowded (around 30 attendants).
 * Attendants were mainly experienced users that have been editing Wikipedia for many years. Just a few newcomers attended.
 * Just before Growth session, a current mentor of our mentorship give a related short talk titled "From tutoring to mentoring: a new program to help newcomers". He was really enthusiastic with our project.
 * Another 2 mentors attended (3 in total). One of them joined just a few days before the meeting and was kind of frustrated because he did not received any question yet from his mentees. The other 2 mentors, that joined before the deployment of the mentorship in es.wp, were happy and commit with their mission, but they felt they received too much questions and have too many mentees assigned.
 * Some attendant show interest in becoming mentors, but at the same time they claim to have no much time for it.
 * Apart from mentorship, attendants were really surprised to learn more regarding our features.
 * Most people were not aware of what we have already done.
 * Some of them, specially women, tell that they would have like to have these features when they started editing.
 * Some newcomers told that they were planning to start using our features.