Talk:Growth/2020

Discussion related to the old Growth team is archived at Talk:Growth/Growth 2014.

New Feature

Choosing a mentor: It may make sense to make it possible for a newcomer to select a mentor from the list of suggested mentors himself. I started enabling experiments on sr.wiki, and one user suggested this idea to me, so here's it. Aca (talk) 09:54, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I'm a Growth ambassador at Czech Wikipedia. Thanks for suggesting this feature! I'm currently working on a new feature that allows mentors to claim a newbie, if they know them off-wiki, for instance. See (draft) help page at Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer homepage/How to claim a mentee. Maybe that's something you would like? Feel free to give comments on that!

I'm honestly not sure if displaying a list of usernames to the newbie is worth it? How would be a newbie supposed to thoughtfully choose their mentor? It would be nice if you could explain how would you like the newbies to use the proposed feature, so we can make a better image of it. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you for this message, Acamicamacaraca!

I think that a newcomer can claim a mentor only after a few interactions with Wikipedia. When I work with newcomers as a volunteer on French Wikipedia, I very rarely have someone who asks for a specialist about a particular topic. Newcomers very often need help about basic things, like adding a source or an image, or understanding some rules. So I don't think that they need to pick a mentor from a list.

If they want to change their mentir, than can do so by simply agreeing with the new mentor who could claim the newcomer. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:33, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

The idea was that e.g. the newcomer can choose the mentor himself based on his description. For example, if a newcomer wants to deal with football topics, he would prefer to choose a mentor who also deals with football topics instead of historical ones. Aca (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Newcomer homepage on fr_wikipedia

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T252420

Hi !

As you can see: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro#Outils_pour_accompagner_les_personnes_d%C3%A9butantes, the community of Wikipedia in French would like to benefit from the new homepage for newcomers

Thank you very much,

Cordially. AirSThib ^{🌌 Cyclist stars cafeteria 🚴} 17:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this message, and happy to see you motivated.

I just replied on the Bistro about it. :) If you community is okay, please create the Phabricator task.

(Today, I learnt that "cordially" is an English word, thank you! 👍) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@AirSThib C'est pas compliqué de se faire un compte Phabricator, il suffit d'aller sur ce lien, et tu peux te créer ton compte grâce à ton compte Wikimedia existant ! Si tu veux, je peux t'aider mais mon anglais à l'air moins bon que toi ! -- Nemo ^Discuter 10:25, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Oui je sais mais j'ai 13 ans donc je souhaite pas pour l'instant en créer un à cause de l'adresse mail. On ne serait pas obligé d'indiquer notre e-mail je l'aurais fait depuis longtemps ! AirSThib ^{🌌 Cyclist stars cafeteria 🚴} 10:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Dans ce cas, il faut demander à quelqu'un du projet Aide et accueil de s'en charger : @Binabik peut-être ou @Jules78120... -- Nemo ^Discuter 10:37, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Oui. AirSThib ^{🌌 Cyclist stars cafeteria 🚴} 10:39, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Si cela n'a pas été fait, je peux ouvrir le ticket, ou en êtes-vous @AirSThib? AB Louis (talk) 15:06, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Le ticket existe et le déploiement a lieu demain, normalement. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:46, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Parfait ! 77.205.153.224 (talk) 08:32, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Resources

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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In the general navbox of the Growth project, there is a bold link: Resources for communities

Should it be linked to Special:MyLanguage/Growth/Communities#Resources for better collaboration with newcomers ? Samat (talk) 22:31, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing it. I've changed it. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:45, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I reopen the topic for one more, related question.

Is there a way, that this link will work with non-English surfaces? For example, if I click on it (using Hungarian surface), I am linked to Growth/Communities/hu#Resources for better collaboration with newcomers which obviously does not exist. Samat (talk) 21:31, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

There is an i18n-ed anchor, #Resources, but apparently it is not working with Special:MyLanguage?

Can you check? Special:MyLanguage/Growth/Communities#Resources Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Your link works, but the link in the navbar didn't.

I believe that these two changes will solve the problem: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Growth/Communities&type=revision&diff=3640829&oldid=3568575 and https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Growth/Navbar&diff=prev&oldid=3641119 . (As soon as the change in the transcluded template will take effect. Reloading or action=purge haven't helped yet.) Samat (talk) 13:46, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

It may take a couple of dummy edits to have everything being fixed. Thank you for your help! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:17, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikiext and Visual editors

I am looking for information on how the team plans to deal with the fact that we have dual editors. This includes, but is not limited to, things such as Newcomer tasks.

Does the team intend to design in an editor-agnostic fashion? Do you intend to funnel users into the Primary editor? The community may reject or disable a product if it attempts to funnel new users into the Secondary editor. Alsee (talk) 03:17, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee -- thanks for looking in detail at our projects and thinking ahead. You're asking an important question that the team is actually starting to discuss. So far, the features that we've built have been editor-agnostic. Specifically, the help panel opens no matter what editor the user chooses; and newcomer tasks lets the user use whichever editor they choose (for wikis that have two edit buttons), or whichever editor is the wiki's default (for wikis that have one edit button). And so the features fall back on the user's or community's choices around editors.

The reason your question is relevant now is because one of the things we're thinking about for newcomer tasks is guidance -- using the help panel to explain to newcomers how to complete the task. The guidance in the panel has to be pursuant to the editor the user is in, of course. So we're looking at what the default editor is on the Wikipedias we're working with (Arabic, Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese), and talking about what preferences those communities have for the editor that newcomers use (in those languages, we have dedicated community contact points that we call "ambassadors"). Interestingly, the different communities that we're working with think about the editors in different ways, which we're learning about.

I'd like to get back to you in the next couple weeks with some more details as we get farther along in design guidance. How does that sound? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. The definition of which editor is primary/default has been a recurring point of conflict, so I was a little jumpy when mention of guidance for how to add links appeared to imply or assume the minority editor. Alsee (talk) 00:29, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee -- I’m getting back to you with some more information and next steps around guidance.  We have talked to our community contacts in the four Wikipedias to which we have deployed newcomers tasks (Arabic, Korean, Czech, Vietnamese).  Their recommendation for their own wikis has been to encourage newcomers to use visual editor when doing suggested edits through this feature’s workflow.  Specifically, what this will mean in those four wikis is:

• In wikis that only have one edit tab, and on mobile devices, users in the newcomers tasks workflow who click edit will see the visual editor.  This is already the default behavior in some wikis. The users will be able to switch to the source editor afterward if they choose.
• In wikis that have two edit tabs (one for the visual editor and one for the source editor), there will be a blue dot on the visual editor tab that nudges the user to choose the visual editor.  They will still be able to choose the source editor instead, if they wish.
• Given the two points above, the written guidance that the newcomer sees will explain how to complete the editing tasks via the visual editor.

You made a good point that other communities may have different preferences around which editor the newcomers should be using.  Our plan for that is to build the software so that communities we work with in the future can opt to prefer the source editor for newcomers -- by including guidance around wikitext instead of VE, and by nudging users toward the source editor instead of toward VE.

I’m hoping that this plan respects the interests of communities, and that we can keep an eye on results to make sure that good edits are being made.  Please leave any thoughts you might have. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF) thanks for getting back to me.

Single Edit Tab: I am painfully aware of the situation. I had to escalate this exact issue to the Executive Director.[1] She had to summon the Product Manger to answer me on it.

Six months before the product was even announced, I asked the manager how he was going to handle the question of default editor. He gave me explicit assurance that he would not deploy the product with a VisualEditor default without asking the community first. Six months later it was deployed to several wikis. It was set to VE default. That nearly provoked another Superprotect-level crisis. The largest of affected communities wrote hacks for the sitewide javascript to overrule/override the deployment. The manager eventually relented and reversed it on three wikis. The other affected wikis were smaller. They were likely unaware of the problem, and if they were aware they likely felt unable to battle the Foundation about it. I let the Single Edit Tab issue slide, as the conflict effectively terminated the project. It looks like I'm going to have to return to the issue and get the Single Edit Tab default fixed globally.

It's generally not acknowledged within the WMF, but the data collected by the MWF shows that VE has a negative impact.

Could you provide me with links to the ArabicWiki, KoreanWiki, CzechWiki, and VietnameseWiki discussions deciding to go with VE? I can use machine translation. I'd like to see whether it was a unilateral decision by your contacts, or whether there was a community consensus. If it was a community consensus, I might try to reach out and provide those communities with the data that the Foundation has gathered on VE. Alsee (talk) 00:51, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee — I first want to make sure the scope of what we’re working on is clear. The Growth team is talking just about the newcomer tasks workflow, which won’t affect the editor seen by newcomers who are not participating in the workflow. This work also won’t alter the experience of non-newcomers.

With respect to your question, we did not go through a community discussion process around the decision to nudge newcomers in the suggested edits workflow toward VE — rather, we relied on our ambassadors in those wikis to represent what they think would work best for their communities. Working this way helps us both iterate quickly while also taking community thoughts into account. In this case, our ambassadors have experience mentoring and teaching newcomers to edit, and think that the visual editor will help those users make their first edits and stick around the wiki, so that one day they can move on to more advanced edits. I think they have built up good trust and judgment with their communities by communicating about Growth team work through newsletters and on-wiki conversations in their native languages, and then taking community concerns to our team so that we can adjust.

In that vein, I think it’s a good idea to make sure that communities are aware of these specific plans around VE, and so we’ll make sure to include this aspect of the newcomer tasks workflow in our team’s next newsletter, so that communities can think about and react to it. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF) yes, I understand.

The tension is the pattern of the Foundation pushing the secondary editor as the default. Wikitext is de facto the primary editor, used by the large majority of editors for the large majority of edits. Within the Foundation there is a sincere and widespread belief that VE is beneficial. However out in actual use on wikis the adoption rate for VE have been dismal, there is broad experience that VE is a poor tool for the job, and there is a strong view by many that it's harmful to push new users into VE by default.

Ideally we need a global answer to avoid rehashing the issue on a wiki-by-wiki and product-by-product basis. However I do not anticipate reaching to that point soon enough to apply here.

I think it’s a good idea to make sure that communities are aware of these specific plans around VE, and so we’ll make sure to include this aspect of the newcomer tasks workflow in our team’s next newsletter, so that communities can think about and react to it.

While that would be an improvement, it is difficult enough for large communities to oppose WMF announcements. Smaller wikis rarely speak up because of the language barrier, and because they may feel powerless to challenge the WMF.

My view on software deployment is that the Foundation should either:

• make a good faith assumption that silent wikis probably agree with the larger wikis that have spoken up; or
• ask them.

Would you be willing to post the question on their central management page? (Village Pump or equivalent.) It's also good practice to make a good faith effort to help people make an informed decision. I could dig up the link for the VE-favorable usertesting the Foundation did with non-editor lab test subjects. There's this graph showing VE has half the interface retention rate as the wikitext editor - for the VE interface users quickly either quit editing completely or they switch to the wikitext interface. There's also a new A/B test on the effect a mobile VE default. The team hasn't made the results public yet but a sub-task makes it clear the results were bad for VE. Alsee (talk) 23:57, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee -- I agree that the story of where and how VE is valuable for users is certainly nuanced, and I don't have the expertise to be able to dig into the data here. I do know that our ambassadors, who are very active in their communities, recommend that we use VE for this workflow and believe that decision aligns with their communities' preferences. We’ve been working with these ambassadors on Growth projects for over a year, and we’re going to continue to trust them to represent their communities as we do our work, and keep communities informed so that they can speak up when they have concerns.  We're not going to post specifically about this issue on those wikis, because our ambassadors don't believe it will be a contentious issue.

As we continue to expand to more wikis, we will likewise make sure that those communities are informed about the feature set before we deploy, including this part about encouraging newcomers to use VE in newcomer tasks.  Our current plan is to inform about this decision in our upcoming newsletter, which goes to many community members and management pages on our target wikis. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

For a moment there I thought things were going well. Not only did you decline the simple request to ask those communities, you escalated declaring you've decided you're going to try to shove out a VE-default on this globally.

If you are unwilling to ask the community, I'll do it. I'll start with English Wikipedia - it represents nearly half of our global community. If necessary I'll organize additional wikis into an effective Global Community Consensus.

I find it painful and baffling that the Foundation keep insisting on making this into a battle. It just contributes to the already-substantial community distrust or even hostility against the Foundation. Alsee (talk) 09:33, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Keeping in touch with projects

I see this:

• We keep in close communication with the communities our team affects, so that our work remains grounded in reality.

and am just curious how one can be in touch with, say, Korean wikipedia community

Ottawahitech (talk) 15:34, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Ottawahitech -- thank you for your question. There are several ways that we keep in close communication with communities:

• We have four "target" wikis, which are the wikis to which we first deploy features to try them out. In each of those target wikis, we have a part-time ambassador drawn from the experienced editor community. We meet weekly with the ambassadors, and they are able to communicate to their communities about our work in the local language, and tell our team about the opinions and preferences of their communities.
• We distribute a regular newsletter that gets posted to the talk pages of anyone who is interested. Those newsletters are translated into many languages. You can view past newsletters and sign up to receive them here.
• We post weekly short updates on this page.
• Community members can also follow along on our work in Phabricator. For instance, on this Phabricator task where we are working on "guidance" for newcomer tasks, our current project.

Does this answer your question? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure is nice to get a reply so quickly!

i guess what i am mostly curious about is how to communicate with people who speak a different language such as Korean. I know one can use google translate, but i find it very time consuming. Thanks Ottawahitech (talk) 15:50, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech -- our approach is to work with people who are multilingual. Our ambassadors, for instance, speak English and their native language (and others!), and so they are able to talk with the Growth team in English and with their communities in the local language. They also use these skills to translate newsletters and other communications. You may be able to find people who speak multiple languages by using categories. For instance, this page lists users on mediawiki.org who speak certain languages. Working with multilingual people solves most of our issues, but we also do use Google Translate from time to time, which helps us get a sense of a local conversation. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

<grin>Wow a second response in a few minutes is a first for me, i think. </grin>

i guess i am kind of wasting everyones time by posting here without organizing my thoughts. What i was getting at was the general difficulty of communicating with others who dont use our language. The reason i mentioned Korean was because i recently participated in a discussion proposing the deletion of a Korean wmf project . The discussion is in english.

Ottawahitech (talk) 16:13, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Oops forgot tomention, i must logoff now Ottawahitech (talk) 16:14, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, not all projects have an ambassador to do the translation work. And English is the common language over the Wikimedia movement.

We are always looking for people who speak multiple languages to facilitate conversations. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:38, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Trizek (WMF) (tfor replying.. and sigh..

I got the impression from looking around (for example here: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub#Babel_templates) that wikipedia had some magic software tool that could help in translation? I guess not and we are dependent on having thousands of volunteers running around translating vast amounts of text. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:45, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Other compagnies provide translation engines. That's a first tool to use when you are facing a text you don't understand. Have a magic button that roughly translate a text directly when you are reading the wikis would be a nice technical wish.

Until then, we will have to rely on volunteer translators. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:40, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks again Trizek (WMF) ,

Is there a list somewhere of translation engines provided by other (free/ ad supprted) companies? I find google translate very cumbersome.

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 00:32, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I would say "on Wikipedia". :)

I use google Translate, because of the number of languages covered. I'm more and more moving to https://www.deepl.com/translator; still proprietary, but less Google, fastest and more precise (at least on the EN <-> FR translations I use). Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:12, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

thanks for the link I will try it out when I get a chance. I just hope it does not collapse when the wiki-herds discover it :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 21:44, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

virtual classes in editing Wikipedia and otherwise supporting Wikimedia Foundation projects

What if anything has been done to offer classes in "Editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects"?

I just posted a brief outline of a proposal on this to w:talk:Encourage_the_newcomers#virtual classes in editing Wikipedia and otherwise supporting Wikimedia Foundation projects. Your comments would be welcomed here or there.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 06:23, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that link (to en en-wiki essay page) should have been [2] Nick Moyes (talk) 10:10, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi @DavidMCEddy -- thanks for bringing up this question. i have heard stories here and there about editing events, like edit-a-thons, being run online during the time of the pandemic, but I can't point to a specific example. I wonder if the Wiki Education Foundation has been thinking about this explicitly. One thing that I do know that has been successful in the past is WikiMOOC on French Wikipedia ("MOOC" standing for "massive open online course"). I think that @Trizek (WMF) might be able to fill you in or point you to more information about it. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello

There is actually some efforts to have Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects classes online! I'm not sure if I can list all of them, since there are numerous initiatives.

I can cite you a few examples, a lot in French since it i my primary language.

you can find massive open online courses (WikiMOOCs). Arabic and French Wikipedia have theirs. Wikimedia Chile has its own online campus for this purpose (project Wikipuentes). There is a WikiData-MOOC project ongoing.

Live editing sessions, where people are editing and explaining what they do to their audience are also common: French Wikipedia has them on Twitch, so as some Wikidataians, I know a Wiktionarist who hosts them on Youtube.

Commons hosts a lot of videos about editing. Unfortunately, a lot of ressources are dispersed.

As you noticed, all these resources are based on videos. Text-based classes are not really successful.

Some wiki-clubs are also on-line. There are less classes, but it is also a good way to learn how to edit.

Hope this helps! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:41, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Lest it's of interest, in English, I've found the Wikipedia Weekly Network videos (live and also available afterwards) to be of some interest. (See here and here).

WikiProject remote event participation seems to be an attempt to coordinate good practice, and the Wikimedia DC chapter have recently run quite a few online events (mostly someone talking over a live Powerpoint presentation about the basics of Wikipedia).

But the real failure of all of us is to effectively find a way to gather together and make available information on current events, meetups and live online classes and to promote that calendar effectively. Without somebody creating a good platform to find out what's going on, and where, and then getting it publicised and used correctly, we are wasting so many wonderful opportunities.

I think this question and answer sums the situation up quite succinctly. Nick Moyes (talk) 15:39, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Team name in other languages

Do I need to translate the name of the team to other language? And if so, what is the exact meaning of the word "growth"? :) Iniquity (talk) 12:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Iniquity -- thanks for that question. @Trizek (WMF) will probably have some good advice about this. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this question!

You can translate the name in Russian if you think it should be translated. It really depends on your community's best practices, and also on how the features are perceived. If your translation focuses on the project of growing up communities, maybe a translation would be better. If your translation focuses on the team's name, maybe it shouldn't be translated since it is a proper noun, defined in English language. Honestly, it is up to you! :)

Concerning the meaning, they are defined by the team's goals and objective, in short increase retention of new contributors. We are trying to see wikis growing up, by reducing the difficulties they may face during their first steps.

I hope this helps you to better understanding the meaning of Growth!

Are you considering to have these features deployed on your wiki? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF), thanks for the detailed answer! :) I will think about it.

> Are you considering to have these features deployed on your wiki?

Yes, I would like to launch these projects on my wiki. We talked about this with @MMiller (WMF) here. Iniquity (talk) 13:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

request for deployment of growth prototype on clinicianwiki.com

Hi I am the founder of clinicianwiki.com. This is a really exciting project and I am happy to help with testing of the prototype on clinicianwiki.com Timingliu (talk) 15:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Timingliu -- thank you for getting in touch and congratulations on founding a new wiki! We agree that the Growth features have the potential to help non-Wikimedia wikis, and you are welcome to install them on your wiki. Our team is able to answer questions, but we won't be able to manage the process or alter the software to better fit non-Wikimedia wikis. Does that sound okay? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @MMiller (WMF) thanks for replying! How can I install the growth features on my wiki? Timingliu (talk) 17:56, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Timingliu -- this is the page that explains about the GrowthExperiments extension and how to install it: Extension:GrowthExperiments. If you have questions, the fastest place to ask is at the support desk: Project:Support desk. Or if the questions are specific to Growth functionality, you can also ask here. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Language screenshots

Hi, I found such a cool thing, maybe we can use it for project documentation? mw:Language_screenshots. Iniquity (talk) 20:10, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

This is indeed a cool thing. When it works. :/ Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:08, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

xD I hope someday there is someone who will support it :) Iniquity (talk) 10:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Logo font

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hi, I asked @RHo (WMF), but she isn't answer me:) What font do you use for your logo? Iniquity (talk) 12:15, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Iniquity, in answer to your question the Growth team logo uses Montserrat , the same font used for the Wikimeddia Foundation wordmark and titles (see more info on meta here), hope that helps! RHo (WMF) (talk) 10:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! :) Iniquity (talk) 14:12, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

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Translation from translatewiki.net

@Trizek (WMF), hi:) How often is the translation from the translatewiki.net updated? Iniquity (talk) 22:00, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello!

Once a week, with the deployment train as announced on Tech News (on Thursdays for your wiki).

In the meantime, you can override some messages locally, but don't forget to remove them when the translation is available! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I know that, but I haven't received translations for the second week. Iniquity (talk) 20:20, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Newcomer's Features- Issues and Suggestions

Hello. I'm from the Hebrew Wikipedia and I helped in deploying the Growth's newcomer features to the Hebrew Wikipedia, which have been recently deployed to our wiki. I just wanted to point out several suggestions and issues that were raised from our Wikipedia, in hope they will be solved, and therefore it will be easier for us to promote the features for frequent usage (and hopefully to set them as default in the future):

-It was suggested that the features should also suggest to new users to write new articles that don't currently exist (the ideas for such articles can be taken from lists we have in our various wikipedia's portals). I suggest that such edits can be suggested to users who choose the "hard" difficulty level of edits in the newcomers' suggested edits.

-It was asked that the blue button on the left side will not have a question mark on it. Although I personally don't think it's problematic, I would like to hear what is your opinion in this manner. Maybe it is better using something else instead?

-If the features are applied as default, will the homepage for newcomers be applied as default to every user (including the experienced ones), or only to these who register since then? The problem is that if it's applied to anyone, many users who don't really need mentors will have to manually remove the random mentor which was assigned to them (because they don't need one), which is quite an inconvenience to say the least.

Thanks המקיסט (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello @המקיסט -- thank you so much for helping deploy these features to your wiki and for communicating about them with your community. So far, there have been 298 suggested edits from 39 users! There have also been 106 mentor questions and 33 help panel questions.

I also heard about some community thoughts from @Aaharoni-WMF, so I'm tagging him here in case he wants to weigh in.

"It was suggested that the features should also suggest to new users to write new articles that don't currently exist (the ideas for such articles can be taken from lists we have in our various wikipedia's portals). I suggest that such edits can be suggested to users who choose the "hard" difficulty level of edits in the newcomers' suggested edits."

• It's interesting to hear you say this, because we have always thought about it the other way around. Usually, it seems like many newcomers want to create new articles, but they fail either because they don't understand the technology or don't understand policies. And so our features try to encourage newcomers to try easier edits first before they create new articles. How are you thinking about this? Is your wiki comfortable with newcomers creating new articles? Or maybe only after they've accomplished some easier edits?

"It was asked that the blue button on the left side will not have a question mark on it. Although I personally don't think it's problematic, I would like to hear what is your opinion in this manner. Maybe it is better using something else instead?"

• In general, when we design a feature, we actually try to design it in similar ways that other kinds of software do it. The reason is that people on the internet get used to certain symbols meaning certain things. Then when they see those symbols in our products, they automatically know what they mean instead of having to learn a new symbol. A common example is using an "X" to close a window. That's why we use the question mark -- we think people already know that the question mark means "help". Does that make sense?

"If the features are applied as default, will the homepage for newcomers be applied as default to every user (including the experienced ones), or only to these who register since then? The problem is that if it's applied to anyone, many users who don't really need mentors will have to manually remove the random mentor which was assigned to them (because they don't need one), which is quite an inconvenience to say the least."

• The way the features work right now is that all new accounts created on Hebrew Wikipedia since the deployment date have an 80% to receive the features. The other 20% are in our "control group", meaning that we compare the work of the 80% to the 20% to see if the Growth features have impact. So as time goes on, more and more users will have the features available, and will hopefully be used to them. Many experienced editors have asked us to adapt the homepage to be more useful for their work. That's certainly something that's possible in the future, but it's just that the Growth team's goal is to focus on newcomers for now. Regarding the mentors -- why do you say that experienced users would have to remove the mentor? If the user doesn't intend to ask any mentor questions, they can just leave the mentorship module alone, and choose not to ask any questions.

Let me now what you think! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

About lists of articles in portals:

There are a couple of issues here:

1. To begin with, it's not necessary about article creation. Portals at the Hebrew Wikipedia also include lists of articles to improve, sometimes manually curated, and sometimes as a link to a category of stubs on the topic. The bigger issue is how can they be connected to the product you are developing. Or, to generalize it even more: How can wiki editors —in any wiki, not just in Hebrew— directly influence the topics and the suggested articles in them. If I understand correctly, they are currently built by analyzing WikiProject templates in the English Wikipedia, processing it with some algorithms, and applying the results to other languages. While this produces reasonable results from what I've seen, it's quite different from the usual way in which wiki editors work: They are used to influencing things directly by editing wiki pages and seeing the results applied immediately in lists or categories. The current technology has several layers that remove the topics from the editors' control. So it's not specifically about portals, but more about having a way to control things directly.
2. Talking about article creation, the Hebrew Wikipedia is not substantially different from English in this regard. Some articles created by new editors are good, and some are not so good. The English Wikipedia is simply much larger, and has much more new article creation, and primarily because of that it has stricter rules and technical limitations about that. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 07:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

About the question mark icon:

Indeed, one user said this, and indeed, there are many other sites that do this. We are just passing the message. That user said that he doesn't like this icon because it is used on other websites, and on other websites it's often ineffective. I don't know if there are many other people who think like he does, but he may have a point: by itself, the fact that it's used on many other sites and apps doesn't mean that it's good and effective. Other than saying that, I trust the Growth designers and the design researchers to make good choices here. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 07:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF), @Amire80 Thanks for your comments. It's great to hear that the features are used more and more in our wiki.

As for the adaptation of the homepage, I'm happy to hear that it applies to more and more users by default. Indeed, there are experienced users who want to use the homepage also in our wiki. However, many experienced users preferred to remove the mentor and just try the experience of the homepage. המקיסט (talk) 14:00, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Survey Results Regarding the Newcomers' Features in the Hebrew Wikipedia

Hello. I had recently made a Survey among Hebrew Wikipedia's users regarding the Newcomers' Features, which was active for about a month (October 14th-November 7th). I would like to share here important results, notes and suggestions from this survey, which will hopefully help in the future development of the features for all of the relevant Wikipedias in general, and the Hebrew Wikipedia in particular. 22 people responded, most of them (except for 5-6) were experienced users, so this should also be considered when seeing the results.

(most of the questions were in a scale from 1-5. 1= not at all, 5=very much)

*When being asked about how much the users are satisfied from the features, most of the users chose 4 and 5 (out of 22, 6 users chose 5 and 7 users chose 4). Therefore, the users are overall satisfied with the features.

*When being asked how much they would like the features to stay in the Hebrew Wikipedia for the future, most of the users chose 5- 11 users out of 22 (so they indeed want the features to stay).

*When being asked how much they would like the features to be available as default for both new and experienced users, most of the users chose 4 and 5 (7 users chose 4, 5 users chose 5 while 4 users chose 3, 2 users chose 2, and 4 users chose 1). Therefore, there is a will among the users to see the features for both new and experienced users as default in the future (however, I also explained later that it's just an option that may be available for the future, and not something to be done soon).

*When asking users who were/are mentors regarding their satisfaction from the mentorship, most of the users chose 3 (5 out of 14), while 4 users chose 4 and 4 users chose 1 (and another user chose 2), so there isn't enough satisfaction from the mentorship.

I got a few more encouraging results about liking the newcomers' homepage (out of 8 users, 7 users chose answers 4 and 5), users being satisfied with the module of suggested edits (out of 5 users, 4 chose answers 4 and 5), or users being satisfied with the help panel (out of 4 users, 4 chose answers 4 and 5), but sadly only few users answered there, so I don't think it can represent enough users to use as a collective answer from our community.

In addition, I would also like to mention a few notes and suggestions that were raised in said survey:

*Users didn't like the random matching of mentees (I explained the reason for such thing, however, and that helping users with basic questions is not as same as a mandatory mentorship and thus personal matching of mentors is not critical for this kind of mentorship. I also offered to tag specific people if they are needed, and to use templates we have to tag experts in various subjects).

*Mentors are unable to know who their mentees are and their contributions (was mentioned quite a lot, before the survey and in it. I mentioned that such thing is in the Phabricator and in development, but this emphasises the need and the importance of such tools).

*It was reported that new users don't answer after they questions were answered (and it even seemed many didn't continue in Wikipedia after that). I wrote about the importance of tagging users, but it's not necessarily the factor here and probably also happened with tagged users.

*Users asked for more subjects in the suggested edits module (and to separate subjects: to separate "Philosophy and Religion" to two separate subjects, and separate the different religions into different subjects instead of putting them all into one). My personal recommendation in this case would be using our portals (hubs, "main pages" for specific subjects) for listing subjects in this module.

*Users suggested to use flow pages (or even mail) for the discussions with the mentees that should be in experienced users' talk pages in order not to overload talk pages, helping the mentees to find the page to talk with their mentors, and to help them not to struggle with WikiCode.

Thanks and sorry for the long message. Hope this will be helpful, and will improve the experience of the features. המקיסט (talk) 21:38, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your message. This survey is a great initiative, and we are happy that you shared the results with us. :)

the results are indeed helpful. First, it shows that people seem to be overall happy about the features.

Concerning notes and suggestions, I have some replies for you that may help mentors.

If a mentor wants to collaborate with a given newcomer, it is possible to claim a mentee. This is useful if you find someone who like editing on the same topic as yours, or if you host a workshop IRL and want to follow up on wikis the people you met.

Mentors wanting to know who are their mentees is covered by a few tickets on Phabricator. I invite you to look at these tickets, since you may find things about having a mentor dashboard, or a filter in recent changes and watchlist just showing your mentees' edits. Your survey gives some wright to these ideas. Please leave comments there with the feedback you received in your survey.

New users not responding is not a surprise to me. As a volunteer, I'm a mentor since 10 years on French Wikipedia, and some newcomers come back after a while. I recently had the case of a user responding after 3 months of absence! It seems to be a lot of time for people like us, active every day on the wikis, but for people who aren't wikiholdics like we are, it is a normal span of time.

For talk pages, maybe you should ask to have the reply tool being deployed to everyone by default on your wiki? It would ease replies from newcomers.

I let @MMiller (WMF) comment as well. :)

thank you again for sharing! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:03, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! :) I will indeed comment in the phabricator regarding showing mentees and their activity to their mentors.

I was a bit surprised to hear that newcomers come back after such a long time and respond, but it definitely sounds right. Hopefully more and more newcomers will return in the future in this manner.

As for deploying the flow tool as default for the Hebrew Wikipedia- I guess I can raise this topic there and see what the community thinks about it, although I personally prefer the regular talk pages over it. המקיסט (talk) 10:53, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

My personal experience on fr.wp is a response time from newcomers of 2-3 days OR around 15 days. This is also something to consider if one has an archiving system on their talk page: don't archive too early!

Structured Discussions (Flow) will not be deployed by default on any wiki. This tool will be abandoned when the new talk pages system will be ready. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I will point this out to the mentors in our wiki.

I'm really sorry for confusing between flow and the reply tool (didn't know there was such tool and accidentally thought it's flow). I hope the discussion there will continue now considering said reply tool. By the way, there was another tool that was suggested previously in this discussion, which is quite similar to the reply tool ,but has more options and is a bit better I think. AFAIK it's called "Convenient Discussions" ("דיונים נוחים"), and it's not avaliable in our wiki through beta, but by adding this line to common.js:

mw.loader.load('https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jack_who_built_the_house/convenientDiscussions.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

I tried it and it's not perfect but overall fine. Many editors who responded previously favoured it over the reply tool and flow. Therefore, I think it may be another good alternative, and suggested it as an option too. המקיסט (talk) 14:31, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

No problem on the confusion. Like I wrote, it happen quite often.

Concerning Convenient Discussions, it is a script. If I remember correctly, this script is loaded for each talk page you visit. But the new reply tool (כלי שיחה) works when asked to. It is lighter and the interface is similar to other tools. the reply tool would be a much better experience for newcomers.

However, I'm not currently working on discussion tools. I informed my colleague WhatamIgoing about the conversation you have on your wiki. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Stats and trends of ukwiki

Hi, @Trizek (WMF), @MMiller (WMF), I'm working on a presentation for the Ukrainian WikiConference about the Growth initiatives, particularly, Newcomer homepage. Can you please guide me to where I can find the numbers and findings about it that exist for ukwiki? Thanks a lot. Ата ^(talk) 16:58, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Ата -- I'm glad to hear that you will be presenting about the Growth features! We think the Growth features are going well, and there is a lot of good news to talk about. We also would be eager to hear what your community members think about them so far. I can generate some numbers and graphs about Ukrainian Wikipedia next week. Is that okay? Here are some questions we have for you:

• The graphs that I want to make are like this one and this one, showing numbers of edits over time and numbers of editors over time. There are a lot of wikis on those graphs, and perhaps it would be easier to show them if we only have a small number of wikis to compare with Ukrainian. Are there some wikis on the list that you think would make the most interesting comparisons?
• Do you need any other help with your presentation? @Trizek (WMF) and I have many slides and pictures. We could also help you learn about our team's future plans, specifically around "structured tasks".

Let us know! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF), If you can generate some numbers and graphs about Ukrainian Wikipedia next week, it will be awesome! I assume that cswiki, huwiki, plwiki, and possibly svwiki might be interesting for comparison. I also asked some users what that would like to hear in the presentation, and here are some points:

• Are mentors being monitored by someone? Is the mentor—mentee conversation being moderated by someone else, and if not, should it be? (My answer: no, they aren't and it isn't; but I saw mentors supplementing additional details when the already given answer from another mentor doesn't seem well. I assume that the question derives from fear of some self-proclaimed mentors not being experienced and humble enough, which says something about the community and not the Growth features themselves.)
• What are the best cases of mentoring? (My answer: I have noticed some imho very nice instances and would like to talk to some mentors next week.)
• How do mentors like the process? (I guess, one would have to ask the all for that.)
• How do mentees like the suggested edits, was there any survey?
• What are the quality of their edits, are they any good?

I am currently looking through the subpages here and presentations on Commons (like this one) and I will gladly receive any suggestions about what findings and future plans you would like me to underline during the 45 minutes that I will have next Sunday :) My email is vira.motorko at gmail.com in case you need it. Ата ^(talk) 10:43, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I can reply to some of the questions :

• About mentoring mentors: the list of mentors is public and talk pages are public as well. It is up to anyone to monitor their activity, as other people monitor what's going on on talk pages. Lists of mentors are usually protected so that not everyone can add their name there. And of course, it is frequent to see other people adding extra information to a mentor reply.
• About best cases of mentoring, I would be curious to have examples since this is not something we particularly monitor.
• About mentors liking the process, it is important to keep in mind that we (as the whole WMF) mostly receive messages about things that don't work. :) I never had the chance to have a direct feedback from a mentor telling me that they like very much the process. I got a few pieces of feedback related to people disliking the process, mostly about the quality of questions received by mentors. However, this is subjective: some people we complaining because they didn't get actual questions but just greetings. Also some rare mentors were complaining about the quality of questions. An evaluation about the quality of messages has been conduced on French Wikipedia and Portuguese Wikipedia. And it appears that the majority of questions received are aligned with Wikipedia's scope, and even if they are not questions, they provide actionable feedback.
• About knowing if mentees like the suggested edits, we haven't surveyed them. But data seems to prove that they appreciate them since the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki significantly increases (+85,6%). Regarding quality, we mesure it by the number of reverts, and the quality of edits made using our tools is comparable to that of a control group. However, our tools haven't measured the overall quality, that would need humans to compare edits.

As Marshall mentioned, our next big step is Structured tasks. Our first tool is about adding links to the articles, and we will test it on our pilot wikis as a prototype. The slides at the end of this presentation would give you a good overview of our project (even if they are just mockups). The tool would be based on a yes/no/not sure system, to guide newcomers understanding what is a good link, and to help improving connexions between different concepts. The yes/no/not sure system would allow them to focus on understanding concepts first without the obligation to understand how to edit (even if they still can edit if they wish to).

Let us know if you need more information! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ата -- I've made some graphs that may be useful to you. The first two show the number of distinct users completing suggested edits each work during 2020, and the second two show the number of edits completed.

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suggested_edits_users_by_week_for_ukwiki_2020-11-30.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suggested_edits_users_by_week_for_five_wikis_2020-11-30.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suggested_edits_by_week_for_ukwiki_2020-11-30.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suggested_edits_by_week_for_five_wikis_2020-11-30.png

Two additional numbers that may be interesting are:

• 476 mentorship questions have been asked by 379 users in Ukrainian Wikipedia
• 275 help panel questions have been asked by 208 users in Ukrainian Wikipedia

Regarding whether mentees like the suggested edits, we asked newcomers on Arabic, Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese about their experiences by posting questions on their talk pages. These questions went to newcomers who have been doing a lot of suggested edits, so we would expect their responses to be positive (otherwise they would have not done so many suggested edits). Many of them say that suggested edits helps them find interesting things to work on, that they like to choose topics of interest to narrow the articles down to certain areas, and that the feature has helped them learn editing policies and rules. We've also seen that some users do a few suggested edits and then move on to other kinds of edits, like translating articles. Other users just continue to do hundreds of suggested edits day after day.

In terms of a best case of mentoring, one story comes to mind from Vietnamese Wikipedia in which a mentee has since grown their involvement and is now a mentor.

Like @Trizek (WMF) said, we are especially interested to know what your community members think of structured tasks. You're welcome to show and demo the prototypes that are in this section.

I hope this information is helpful, and please stay in touch with any other needs. We want to hear how the session goes! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both, Marshall and Benoît, you are extremely helpful, as always <figure-inline></figure-inline> Hopefully I will have some thoughts about the structured tasks from the conference attendees right away; and of course it can be discussed onwiki later. Ата ^(talk) 11:22, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Ата. We thank you as well, since you continuously take care of the experiments on Ukrainian Wikipedia! :)

This brand new page may also interest you as well: Growth/Results. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

A late update from me: I used the suggested media, and the session went ok Here are my findings and questions:

• The mentors have a need to know better what newcomers see and to share best practices of having conversations with them – it will be good to have an extended talk about this separately.
• How do newcomers know that their question on the help desk or on the mentors talk page got answered? I stressed the importance of pinging users – and also people suggest that these notifications were more prominent, maybe even in a form of another block on the homepage, or as an additional bell icon next to the mentor's name (look! they answered you!).
• In the suggested edit module, – in Ready? Click "Edit" to get started. – the word Edit might be a link to the action=edit, or be in some other way more suggestive about where to actually click. (As far as I remember there is this blue dot that suggests clicking? does it work here? I wasn't sure.)
• Is it possible to switch Extension:GrowthExperiments on a non-Wikimedia wiki?
• Can a mentor mark themselves as away yet? will a newbie be automatically switched from a mentor who haven't logged in for a while to another mentor?
• One experienced mentor reminded us that newcomers' questions may be sorted out in recent edits, and by looking for recent versions mentors can find questions, unanswered by others.

There was no particular feedback on structured edits. Ата ^(talk) 18:31, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your report! It is really appreciated.

• Mentors can discover a newcomer typical experience by creating a new account. Concerning mentors, I don't know if you know that we have a training for them.
• Newcomers know that their question has been answered when (and if) they are pinged. Like you said, pinging is a must-have on a reply. This idea of having a notification on the homepage is something that should be considered. Thank you for passing this along!
• There is always a blinking blue spot highlighting the "edit" button.
• It is possible to deploy the extension to any Mediawiki wiki that has the right configuration. But we won't support any suggestions coming from third party wikis.
• It is not yet possible for a mentor to say they are away. Please add any context concerning this question to T227876 if you can.
• Great reminder. Has it lead to people suggesting to take care about questions left by other mentors? Are mentors cooperating on your wiki?

Let me know if you need more details about anything! :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ата -- thank you for the notes about your meeting. It is always good to hear these sorts of thoughts and ideas. I have a couple more notes to add:

• I suspect that newcomers who don't find out that their question has been answered is one of the biggest problems with the mentorship workflow. I think that many newcomers may expect an answer in seconds or minutes, instead of hours or days, and so once they don't receive an answer, they close the window and don't come back. Many of them also don't register with an email address, and so unless they go back to the wiki to look for their notifications, they may not find out that they have received a response even if they have been pinged. I think some ideas to address this include (a) introducing some sort of live chat so that newcomers don't have to wait for a response, (b) encouraging more newcomers to register with an email address when they create their account, (c) maybe one day integrating with a chat app so that newcomers could get pinged to their phone.
• About making the word Edit into a link to action=edit: this is actually something we discussed when building the feature. The reason we didn't want a link there is because part of the point of suggested edits is to teach newcomers to edit on their own. Therefore, we want them to know that they have to click "Edit" at the top, so we don't want to give them a confusing shortcut when they're being guided. So instead, we apply the blue dot. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 15 January 2021 (UTC)