Growth/Communities/Get the Growth experiments on your wiki

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Growth

Help contents: Use the tools: (Help panel, Enable the Homepage, How to claim a mentee, Suggested edits)

Getting the features[edit]

You wish to have the features deployed on your wiki?

Please:

  1. check the conditions
  2. contact us to inform the Growth team
  3. fill a Phabricator task.

Create a pre-filled 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

Other translations

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. → Know more about the Help panel.

Help panel translations

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.

Where questions are posted ("help desk")[edit]

The Help panel help newcomers to post questions to the local help desk. The Help desk will post these messages:

  1. first on Newcomers friendly place listed on Q11059110
  2. if there is no newcomer friendly place, on an Ask a question place listed on Q5621643
  3. if there is no such place on the Village pump listed on Q16503

This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.

The page where questions are posted can be locally changed by editing the page MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json

Archiving the help desk This may change[edit]

  • Is your help desk a traditional page or a Flow page?
  • How is your help desk archived? By bot? Manually? Weekly? Yearly? Does it has a special configuration, like subpages Wikipedia:Help desk/2020-10 or a template like Wikipedia:Helpdesk/{{Y-M|0}}?

Pages listed in the help panel[edit]

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

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]

Homepage translations

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.

Tutorial[edit]

The page displays a tutorial for first steps based on the link found on Q3945 or Q915263. This is our default configuration. You can also provide a link that is not listed on Wikidata.

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: Update article, Add references, Add links, Expand article, Copyedit article → Know more about Newcomers tasks.

Suggested Edits translations are included in the Homepage translations

Maintenance templates[edit]

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
Add Links Q27919580 Q75275496
Copyedit article Q10953805 -
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:

  1. Wikipedias we in the set of our "target" wikis (Czech, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic) – we address all the feedback they give us.
  2. Mid-sized Wikipedias – they get the features as they are, but we may consider suggestions of improvements from those wikis.
  3. 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 experiments are listed above.

Other MediaWiki wikis, not hosted by Wikimedia, can check on Extension:GrowthExperiments to get the features.

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