Growth/Communities/Get the Growth experiments on your wiki
Help contents: Use the tools: (Help panel, Enable the Homepage, How to claim a mentee, Suggested edits)
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Getting the features[edit]
You wish to have the features deployed on your wiki?
Please:
- check the conditions
- contact us to inform the Growth team
- fill a Phabricator task.
The deployment of the Growth team features will happen soon on your wiki? Or your wiki agreed on getting the tools?
Here are some resources to help you with this deployment.
You can ask for help on the talk page.
You can also try the tools.
Translations[edit]
The interface needs to be translated, or the translations have to be checked. We also provide some useful information both for mentors and newcomers, and these pages have to be translated as well. This guidance page can help you understanding this translation work.
Mandatory translations[edit]
- Translate the interface (done on translatewiki.net, which needs a specific account)
- Translate these aliases for the interface:
- "Special:WelcomeSurvey"
- "Special:Homepage"
- "Special:Impact"
- "Special:ClaimMentee"
- Growth/Focus on help desk/Help panel - standard help link to use the Help panel
- Growth/Communities/How to interact with newcomers - standard help link for mentors)
- Help:Growth/Tools and subpages - help pages for mentors and newcomers
Other translations[edit]
- Translate the documentation
- Growth/Personalized first day - optional
- Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer homepage - optional
- Growth/Understanding first day - optional
- Growth/Focus on help desk - optional
Help panel[edit]
The help panel is displayed on articles, user pages and help pages. It allows users to ask questions to the help desk while they are editing, or get some advice when they make some suggested edits. →
Learn more about the Help panel.
Namespaces[edit]
The help panel is deployed on namespaces 0 "Main", 2 "User" and 4 "Help".
Namespaces other than 0 "Main" can be changed by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
after the deployment on your wiki.
Pages listed in the help panel[edit]
This section lists some Wikidata items that match templates or help pages. The links there are possible suggestions of templates or help pages. We need your community to provide links to wikipages. It is not mandatory to have these wikipages linked to Wikidata: you can provide any link that would work. |
5 most important help pages newcomers should have access to when editing are listed in the help panel.
By default, these pages are:
- Manual of style, taken from: Q4994848
- Help:Editing, taken from: Q151637
- Insert images using the visual editor, taken from: Q27919584
- Insert a citation using the visual editor, taken from: Q24238629
- Article Wizard, taken from: Q10968373
If a page is not listed for your language on Wikidata, you can:
- before the deployment, list it on the matching Wikidata item before the deployment (you may have to create it first),
- after the deployment, no link will not be displayed.
Choosing different pages[edit]
These pages can be changed by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
after the deployment on your wiki.
Here is some advice about help pages:
- If you wish to change a page, we advise you to review the new page and enrich it first. For instance, check if the page is well illustrated, if it presents the different steps needed to achieve something
- We recommend using the visual editor.
- We recommend to prefer step-by-step tutorials.
- We recommend to keep a link about how to add images to articles. It is a popular request.
Search function[edit]
The Help panel has a search function.
By default, it will search on namespace 4 "Wikipedia" and 12 "Help".
You can add more namespaces by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
.
If people need more information, they have access to the main page of the help namespace. The page is listed on Q914807. This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.
Homepage[edit]
The Homepage gathers useful informations for newcomers. There, they will find suggested edits (see next section), a link to a tutorial to learn more about your wiki and their mentor. → Know more about the Homepage.
Mentors list[edit]
How this works?[edit]
Mentors are important: they help newcomers to make safe first steps on the wiki.
Each newcomer has a random mentor assigned to them automatically. There is no obligation for the newcomer to contact their mentor.
We recommend having one mentor for every 500 new accounts per month, i.e. if your wiki has 5,000 new accounts per month, you should have 10 mentors signed up in order to handle the volume of incoming questions. We advise to have a minimum of 3 mentors. Have more mentors than needed will decrease the effort.
Configuration[edit]
The Homepage will pick names on the link found on Q14339834. This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.
How to format this page is a critical point! Please follow these indications:
- The format of the page is a list of mentors, using a special format:
[[User:Name]]|Description
(add no links nor wikitext in it) - Protect that page, so that only experienced users can sign-up
Suggested edits[edit]
Suggested Edits (Newcomers tasks) are located on the Homepage. Newcomers are invited to work on 5 maintenance tasks, rank by level of difficulty:
Task | Level of difficulty | Goal of the task |
---|---|---|
Copyedit article | easy | fix spelling, grammar and tone |
Add Links | easy | add links between articles |
Update article | medium | bring existing articles up-to-date |
Add References | medium | find sources for existing articles |
Expand article | hard | expand stubs to become sourced articles |
→ Know more about Newcomers tasks.
Maintenance templates[edit]
This section lists some Wikidata items that match templates or help pages. The links there are possible suggestions of templates or help pages. We need your community to provide links to wikipages. It is not mandatory to have these wikipages linked to Wikidata: you can provide any link that would work. |
Each task is identified on a maintenance templates:
Task | Level of difficulty | Primary maintenance template | Other possible maintenance template |
---|---|---|---|
Copyedit article | easy | Q6292692 | - |
Add Links | easy | Q13107723 | Q5624688 |
Update article | medium | Q5617874 | - |
Add References | medium | Q5962027 | Q6192879 |
Expand article | hard | Q5529697 | Q5623589 |
This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata as far as it matches the task description.
Some templates have redirects.
They can be added by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
after the deployment on your wiki.
At the moment, we can't add other tasks the ones listed in the table above.
Learn more[edit]
Each task has "learn more" link:
Task | Primary link to help page | Other possible link to help page |
---|---|---|
Copyedit article | Q10953805 | - |
Add Links | Q27919580 | Q75275496 |
Update article | Q4664141 | - |
Add References | Q79951 | Q642335 |
Expand article | Q10973854 | Q4663261 |
This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.
You can change each link by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
after the deployment on your wiki.
Additional links[edit]
Suggested Edits needs two more links to work.
Task | Primary link to help page | Other possible link to help page |
---|---|---|
Create an article | Q4966605 | Q10968373 |
Add an image | Q27919584 | Q4618557 |
"Create an article" is not a task. There is a placeholder for this task, but the button is grey, inactive. Create an article is a very complicated task. It is actually the sum of all other maintenance tasks suggested. So encourage people to work on other tasks, before trying to create an article. However, we don't want to block newcomers from creating an article. This is why we provide a link to an help page to create a new article.
This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.
You can change each link by locally editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json
after the deployment on your wiki.
Conditions to get the features[edit]
Any wiki can request to have these features, with the following conditions.
As detailed on our focus, we will work with the following wikis by order of priority:
- Wikipedias we in the set of our "target" wikis (Czech, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic) – we address all the feedback they give us.
- Mid-sized Wikipedias – they get the features as they are, but we may consider suggestions of improvements from those wikis.
- All other Wikimedia projects – they get the features as they are, and the team will not have time to prioritize improvements specific to those wikis.
Bug reports will be prioritized by the Growth team.
Features will all be deployed (no substitutions, except if incompatible with an existing process), as "experiments". Experiments means that a portion of newcomers will receive the features (the treatment group), and a portion will not (the control group). By comparing these two groups, we will be able to measure the impact of the feature on newcomer retention. Some wikis may not have these groups, at the Growth team discretion.
The prerequisites to get the features are listed above.
Other MediaWiki wikis, not hosted by Wikimedia, can check on Extension:GrowthExperiments to get the features.