Talk:Growth/2021

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

Handle newcomers mentor assignment when a mentor quits

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T272376

What happens if a mentor removes themselves from the list (if they for some reasons don't want to continue being a mentor)? Will the newcomer get a new mentor automatically (and if so, will they be notified)? Ainali (talk) 16:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Once a user has been assigned a mentor, they keep that mentor even if the mentor removes themselves from the active mentor list.

The workaround is to use Special:ClaimMentee. It can be used by any other mentor who monitors the retired mentor's talk page so that they can empty the list of active newcomers for this retired mentor.

We are working on plans about scaling and improving tools for mentors. In your opinion, what would be the ideal solution for this situation? :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:38, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I guess the tricky part is to know which newcomers were assigned to this mentor. Or is this information public somewhere? Ainali (talk) 13:59, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

See Help:Growth/Mentorship/Integrating mentorship#Magic word. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 14:01, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

The magic word is not a solution to this. It's just one user and it is actually the other way around. It shows a mentor for specific mentee. It would help if it would show all mentees for a specific mentor. Nux (talk) 09:48, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

A tool that reassign mentees en masse would help there? You put a mentor's name in it and all mentees are reassigned. This is covered by T272376, as you know. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes. That would be great 🙂. I'm sometimes curios how many mentees I have, but I don't really need that info. Nux (talk) 16:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

We have a project to have a mentor dashboard which could potentially include an overview of your mentees :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer.

One simple idea that we got was just to randomly assign a new mentor and then give a notification to the newcomer what has happened. Ainali (talk) 07:06, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

I support this idea. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 13:47, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

The idea of automatically reassign activated mentees to new mentors when their mentor quits or is blocked is tracked as T272376, where I'm going to add your feedback. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Who is the newcomers's mentor?

There is a problem that the ru:Template:Hello is not synchronized with the mentor list in any way. And I, with a cursory glance, could not find how to do it. Is there an API that allows you to see who the mentor of a particular newcomers is? Iniquity (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I think a word is missing in the first part of your message. :)

> Is there an API that allows you to see who the mentor of a particular newcomers is?

No. Could you describe what would be the outcome of it? What is the need for mentors? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:35, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello :)) Yes, “Hello template” is missing :) I want to synchronise this template with mentors list. Iniquity (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems that it is a popular request. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T233250 for details! :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata

Linking to Wikidata could be another "medium" task. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 13:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion. However, we prefer to keep things on Wikipedia for now, to avoid confusion by editing across the wikis. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@NGC 54 -- thanks for the idea! Could you explain more about what this task would include? What would the newcomers link to Wikidata? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): Articles. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 10:55, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

So it would be about including newly created articles to Wikidata? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:15, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Not only "newly". For example, on Romanian Wikipedia (

ro:Categorie:Articole care necesită legături interlingve

) there are some articles unconnected to Wikidata. However, I see that this task would be suitable only for some wikis, where there are articles that have this issue. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 17:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. As you say, we are trying to create tools with an universal use. But this issue is real and should be kept in mind. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 18:49, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Homepage

I see that there is an empty space between "Suggested edits", "Your impact", "Your mentor" and "Get help with editing" modules. Is there any proposed module for that empty space?

I do not see a "Ask the Help Desk" button in Homepage; a similar button would be useful (to choose ask the mentor or ask the Help Desk).

Why the "Create a new article" task cannot be checked? If it is not a real task, it could be integrated somewhere else, but the users still need a tutorial about how to create an article (where the notability is also described). "Create a new article" could be another module, but in this case it should be recommended to edit before that (with "Suggested edits").

Also, a tutorial about translating pages would be good (with ContentTranslation and with a draft/subpage in "User page"). --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 14:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi @NGC 54 -- you bring up an interesting point about having the "ask the help desk" button on the homepage. In the first version of the homepage we actually did include both buttons. Here is a screenshot. But we found that the "mentor" button got about 15 times more questions than the "help desk" button. Based on how obvious it was that users preferred to ask mentors, we removed the "help desk" option in order to simplify the page.

Regarding content translation, we are planning an integration! The Language team is starting to roll out the "section translation" capability, which we think will be easier for newcomers than translating full articles (and it works on mobile). The idea would be that users could select "section translation" as a task, and then the feed would list articles that need sections translated. When the newcomer selects an article, it would take them to the Content Translation tool. How does that sound? Do you think that would work well? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 11:40, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I think you don't see the Impact module. But this module is default. Can you compare with the screenshot?

The "ask the help desk" button is supposed to be displayed on the help panel, not on the Homepage. Maybe you found an out-of-date information on a project page. Do you have a link to it?

Create a new article is a very often requested task. As a volunteer mentor on French Wikipedia, I got this question every 3 questions. The goal with this greyed box is to encourage newcomers to do the other tasks beforehand. We kept this box as a placeholder, and as an encouragement to do the other tasks. Plus, on wikis where the tools are active, there is a link that goes to the local article wizard.

At the moment, we have no plans regarding the development of things around this box, but we are considering to have something around translations. For now, we are exploring this possibility by asking people who create a new account if they can work on translations. We use the Welcome Survey for this. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I see the "Your impact" module. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 15:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Where is your empty space then? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:42, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 16:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Ha, yes. So we have the same thing. :)

It is normal. We may have some new modules coming there at some point. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Another possible task:

• Adding an image
• Uploading an image
• Adding a category
• Creating a category
• Creating a redirection --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 11:17, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions.

We are currently working on adding an image.

We have discarded uploading an image, due to the complexity of copyright. Also, we focus on Wikipedia, and uploading images is more a Wikimedia Commons thing.

Concerning the other suggestions, how do you think newcomers will appreciate them? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:08, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Change request in the Post welcome survey path

@Trizek (WMF)

This is about tewiki.

Post survey submission, the newcomer is taken to a page where it is asking to choose a destination from

1. where the newcomer came form (lets call it "referring page") and 2. newcomer Homepage.

If the newcomer chooses the referring page, there is a chance that the newcomer may not remember to go to his Homepage after that. The very purpose of the project is defeated at this point.

Please see if it can be changed as -

The newcomer will be taken to the Homepage after the survey. There, they will be asked if they want to go the trigger page. This way, they will not miss the friendly homepage, and the mentor.

Thank you Chaduvari (talk) 04:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Chaduvari

The newcomer is supposed to get a pop-up that shows the user page link, and sans something like "there is your homepage, don't forget to visit it".

We had to make a choice between forwarding users who create an account to immediately edit a page, compared to the ones who just create an account. We choose to give a choice to the user. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Initial Editor settings for the New user

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T279029

@Trizek (WMF), this is about my observation on tewiki.

New user has their editor preferences set as 2010 Wikitext editor. I think it should be Visual editor which makes editing easy and user-friendly for them. Can you please think it over.. thank you. Chaduvari (talk) 07:56, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I'm curious to know how you tested it. Here is what I did:

1. I picked a random task from my Homepage,
2. I click "Edit",
3. I have the visual editor.

I did it using my work account and also a brand new test account.

At the moment, your wiki has one single "edit" tab. By default, clicking on it loads the visual editor for new users. If they switch to the 2010 wikitext editor when the edit and save from this editor, then the Edit tab will open the wikitext editor until the user switches back to the visual editor.

The help panel, shown when people work on suggested edits, encourage users to switch back to the visual editor. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:33, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I created a new user and tested it. To recheck, I created another user today. After completing the survey, I went to my Homepage. From there, I went to edit a page. There I saw "Edit source" tab only. When I clicked it, it showed me 2010 Wikitext editor.

In the "edits" tab of the "preferences", the settings are like this:

• "Enable the editing toolbar": Checked
• "⧼visualeditor-preference-betatempdisable⧽": Unchecked
• In the "Editing mode:" drop-down list, "Remember my last editor" is selected Chaduvari (talk) 06:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. The visual editor is the default editor on your wiki.

@Whatamidoing (WMF), did I miss something on this issue? Why some new users get the wikitext editor on te.wp? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's going on, but I've filed a bug report, and the devs will look into it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Mentor and mentees

@Trizek (WMF), hi :) Help me please. Do all newcomers get a mentor? Or only 80%? Iniquity (talk) 09:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello!

At the moment, the features are only given to 80% of newcomers. We plan to move to 100% soon, after our second look at the data. It is a work in progress, we expect the results to be published soon! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Iniquity and @Trizek (WMF), I'd like to clarify this a bit. While the features are enabled only to 80 % of newcomers, a mentor is assigned to everyone, including users who do not get the features. The assigned mentor is not used by MediaWiki itself, but it can be retreived through the magic keyword (#mentor) and used by on-wiki templates. That was decided in T275514. Best, Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your reply! @Martin Urbanec (WMF), and for old users, those who were registered before Growth functions were deployed on wiki, a mentor is assigned? Iniquity (talk) 11:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

No, and it also isn't assigned for people who did not get Growth features before T275514 was implemented. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks :) Iniquity (talk) 18:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Statistics for ro.wp

Does it would be possible to see data for Romanian Wikipedia like those from Growth/Analytics updates/EditorJourney initial report and Growth/Analytics updates/Welcome survey initial report? --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 18:38, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

EditorJourney is not available for your wiki. We are limiting the number of wikis where this tool is used, since it is collecting data. It is a lot of work to have it on more wikis, so we have decided not to deploy it anymore. But the report you link to is a good reflection of what people do when they create an account on Wikipedia, whatever the language.

Regarding the Welcome survey, I'm asking of some data could be available soon. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:10, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Links suggestion

When suggesting links, Special:DeadendPages could also be used. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 11:39, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that note, @NGC 54. I think the idea behind that special page is similar to what our algorithm will be doing. The link recommendation algorithm is going to be finding articles that need lots of links added. They won't necessarily have zero links, but they will have fewer than other articles. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Notice about the medium and hard tasks

After completing some linking and/or copyediting tasks, and if no medium/hard tasks are selected, users could be noticed again on Special:Homepage about updating, references adding and expanding. On Romanian Wikipedia, I do not see users updating, adding references or expanding (expanding I see, but seldom) when using Suggested Edits, only copyediting, adding links and vandalizing (see https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Schimb%C4%83ri_recente?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&tagfilter=newcomer+task%7Chelp+panel+question&limit=1000&days=30&urlversion=2). --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 18:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@NGC 54 -- that's right, we definitely want to work on this in the future. We think that if we see newcomers who are successfully accomplishing easy tasks, we could nudge them to try harder and more valuable ones. This is part of what we're thinking about in the upcoming "positive reinforcement" project. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Unable to add template on bn:মিডিয়াউইকি:NewcomerTasks.json using Special:EditGrowthConfig

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.

---

I'm trying to add a template (bn:টেমপ্লেট:পরিষ্করণ) on bn:Mediawiki:NewcomerTasks.json using Special:EditGrowthConfig but it's not working. It's says "টেমপ্লেট:টেমপ্লেট:পরিষ্করণ-এর অস্তিত্ব নেই।" (Template:Template:পরিষ্করণ does not exist).

I tried adding "পরিষ্করণ" without prefix "টেমপ্লেট:" (template) but that is also not working.

1. I need guideline how to add template using Special:EditGrowthConfig (note: i successfully edited that on test wiki but for some reason not on bnwiki)

2. while doing that, when i submitted the edit, this happened. id changed to wikidata item id. Is it ok or should i revert the edit? আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 01:46, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for getting in touch about this! @Martin Urbanec (WMF) can help you with your question. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@আফতাবুজ্জামান Hello, thank you for reporting this bug! The special pag wants you to use no-prefix names. However, it looks there's a bug in the autocomplete mechanism, looking to the main namespace instead to the template one. As the form checks for existance of the template, it doesn't let you to add a page that's not suggested by the autocomplete, and as the suggestions are wrong, you're not allowed to add this template there.

I filled this autocomplete bug as T285748 to Phabricator. Since I'm not able to fix the cause, I also figured out a workaround, which you can see in T285750 in Phabricator.

Ad 1) Unfortunately, that's not possible via the form because of a bug. If you feel like it, you can try editing bn:MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json manually, or also I can do it for you. Alternatively, you can wait until the bug is fixed, and use the form then.

Ad 2) That's expected. We decided to start using Wikidata items as link IDs. It does not impact what the user sees, the link IDs only change what we the Growth team see as what link the newcomers click. This data helps us to understand newcomers better. That's also why it's not possible to change IDs in the form itself. Feel free to keep the edit in :).

I hope this helps. Do let me know if you have any other questions. Best, Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for answer. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 12:16, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@আফতাবুজ্জামান I just deployed a workaround for this bug. I tried to add the template through my staff account, and it worked (I self-reverted, as I'm not sure where that template is supposed to be). Could you try it again, please? Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is working now. Thank you. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 15:07, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear it! Closing this thread then :). Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

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

Consider Wikisource

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T290441

Today I learned about the work of your team, and seeing only the mock-ups, I think it's the way to go.

That been said, I write to you to ask you to consider Wikisource. I think the tools you have developed are suited for us, and here's my reasons:

1) we are mainly small communities with dire need for growth 2) our work is very fun, you get to read a lot about that you like, and there is room for everyone. (There's always more and more texts, and no subject is "taken") 3) we have a huuuge backlog, lots of stuff that need maintenance 4) our workflow has a very steeped learning curve, which usually deter newcomers. Once you get the basics, it's as easy as reading a book.

Let me know what you think about this. If there's any chance, some of the community's members are really tech-savvy and surely will be happy to work with you. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 23:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello Ignacio, and thank you for your message !

As written on the get-the-features page, we keep the door open to any community wishing to deploy the feature at their wiki. For non-Wikipedia wikis, they get the features as they are, and the team will not have time to prioritize improvements specific to those wikis. However, it doesn't mean that it is impossible for you to get the features, nor get improvements being made. :)

I don't know if you already tried the features, for instance at Spanish Wikipedia. I think they could fit Wikisources as they are:

• the Homepage is the key feature. There, we can eaisly deploy the following modules:
  • the mentorship module would be very helpful for any newcomer. You get an experienced user assigned to you when you create your account, so that you can get some advice when it is time to edit.
  • Suggested edits are a bit more tricky to change, but maybe some of the existing maintenance tasks could be used on Wikisource. Or you could "hack" some of these tasks, by over-writing all messages locally. The feature offers 2 placeholders for easy tasks, 2 for medium tasks and 1 for hard ones. We need to figure out how to triage them by topic.
  • Other modules available at the homepage would remain unchanged.
• the Help panel can be customized with helpful links so that newcomers can have them on hand. We can also add either a link to the mentor talk page, or to the local help desk.

I'd say it is something we should try! I will share your idea with the rest of the team, to check about this possibility. The most important point then would be to find a Wikisource to volunteer. Any thoughts? ;) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm an admin at Spanish Wikisource. Tomorrow after my shift ends I will look into those pages and see what I can do.

If I need help with the setup, can I contact you by email? Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 15:39, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

We will have to work together in order to check if the deployment is possible and how to customize it.

Keep me posted at: bevellin@wikimedia.org :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Ignacio Rodríguez, I believe the procedure is to open a query at the wiki where it needs to be deployed, and seek community consensus in a vote and discussion. Once that's done then deployment and customization may proceed.

Trizek, MMiller, MFlorence, I would suggest that you put a message out in TechNews for all sister wikis (Wikibooks, Wikisource, et al) and invite them to deploy any of the Growth Team projects there, if you haven't done so already. (It is in my opinion better to do it early as software engineering may be influenced by custom needs of these wikis and their early implementation could perhaps help to improve the software design with little overheads.)

Thanks. Gryllida 21:27, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gryllida, thank you for your encouragement to see more wiki getting our features!

Our current focus is on Wikipedias. As a consequence, our features aren't designed to work properly at other wikis. French Wiktionary already enabled some of the features, but not all of them, because they aren't relevant: what's the point to add links between definitions, or to work on copyediting?

We have decided to provide a good Growth experience to sister projects instead of just taking the features "as they are", with more limited functionalities. As a consequence, we are not encouraging the deployment of Growth features at sister projects for now. Here is our plan: at the moment, I'm working on collecting information from sister projects, to know the kind of tasks they usually provide to newcomers. This way, we can improve Growth features to for the specific needs of Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc.

It seems that our first group of wikis would be Wikisource, since I received several requests from different groups. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:38, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello!

A first meeting happen with some users of Wikisouces from India, about adopting Growth features to Wikisource (notes here).

Now, I'm looking for more feedback to have a better overview of the needs of Wikisource.

@Ignacio Rodríguez, do you think it would interest some people from Spanish Wikisource to have a virtual meeting to discuss about welcoming newcomers at Wikisource, and how Growth tools could help?

Thank you! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:54, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) Nobody answered at Spanish WS. If you want to have a virtual meeting with me, please email me for coordination. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 14:55, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to ask the broader community and tell you what they think. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 16:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The Ukrainian section of Wikisource is also not against this expansion in Wikisource. In the near future, I will start a discussion on the project. Best regards, admin of the Ukrainian section Arxivist (talk) 08:51, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello

I just created a project page to have everything regarding Growth features and Wikisource at the same place. Please let me know, on this new page's talk page what you think about it.

I will soon schedule a discussion time about Wikisource and Growth. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:36, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Sister wikis

Hello MMiller, MFlorence, I would suggest to call the other contributors 'peers' rather than 'mentors'. In my view this would be a more balanced semantics in some wikis. Would you agree? Can this be made configurable on a per-wiki basis? Gryllida 21:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Aren't all users peers on wiki? Ата ^(talk) 07:23, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

In the context of the Growth features, "Mentors" is a role. Like "Admins, "bureaucrats", "Patrollers"... are role at the different wikis.

Mentors are experienced wikimedians who volunteer to reply to newcomers' questions.

The term "Mentor" is translatable wiki per wiki. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:47, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment

Hello! I wanted to give a general comment on the whole Growth initiative, how I found out about it and what are my opinions on it, hoping they can be helpful on the long term. Given that the answer may be large, I'll try to break it down in replies.

I'm an admin at SqWiki and while patrolling the latest changes, I noticed that some users were posting templated questions in an old page of ours which had years without getting any input. The subject of the questions was always the same, differing on details. When the new questions rate (unanswered by anyone) changed from 1 in 3 months to 2 per month, I decided to investigate and found out that they were coming from "the blue-question mark sphere" that "appeared randomly in some pages", which I had ignored in the past. I spent 3 days trying different articles and namespaces until today I stumbled on it and started "reverse-engineering" it with trial and error. Eventually I learned about this initiative and after around 30 minutes reading around the subpages I found what I was searching for: Speciale:EditGrowthConfig

This opened up a page which I had no idea it existed until now and I was able to finally customize the behavior of the "mysterious blue-question mark sphere", where it should appear (everywhere) and where it should lead the users for their questions (another page we use now for that purpose which I modified to fully cooperate with the added feature). Klein Muçi (talk) 13:21, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm the most active admin in the actual SqWiki community and given that I had no idea about the whole initiative I can almost say with 100% certainty that no one from our community knows about it. I found out about MediaWiki:NewcomerTasks.json and MediaWiki:GrowthExperimentsConfig.json pages which, if you see their history, you'll see that they were created from a steward with an edit summary that just pointed to a phab request with no other contributions on them other than my actual contribution now, attesting of the lack of information that I'm describing.

I do believe this overall lack of information may provide problems for small wikis, where the main interest is on article number growth, help and wikipedia namespaces are almost ghost towns and the small number of active contributors doesn't venture out of the mainspace to care about questions being answered. This may provide a lot of disappointment from new users that finally find somewhere where to ask a question only to find out a bit later it would be forever unanswered.

Therefore I think we should try and inform communities more massively about this so they can prepare beforehand by creating and then guarding the said pages for new questions by putting on duty at least one of their active users to care for the new questions. Klein Muçi (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Having said all that, I can't stress enough how much I do think this whole initiative was needed on Wikimedia for years now. I do organize a lot of edit-a-thons and given that I have interface admin privileges I tend to take note how new users react on the software/interface part and their overall experience. And all the users coming from a young age are strongly alienated by the Wikipedia's interface and the way things work overall. Those coming from an older age will say that they can operate it because they remember how forums used to work back on the day but the new generation has no idea of that internet era. All the new webpages and social medias (which make for around 75% of daily internet use these days) now share some common features like commenting/replying, having specialized pages for specific functions which differ in appearance and in no way have computer code in them, react buttons and counters, profile pages, help panels, instant messaging and online/offline status, which have become a natural way of the way the younger generation navigates the web. On every edit-a-thon that we make, a large portion of time is spent on teaching users about the whole forum-like interface and on concepts like "userpage ≠ profile", "messages ≠ private messages", etc. which tend to alarm them because of privacy worries like "Everyone can see everything?!".

My whole work on my community is dedicated to creating small facilities that try to close the gap in this aspect and make SqWiki navigation more instinctual for new users. I read about the whole initiatives on the Growth project and I'm really happy to see that actual steps are being taken on this direction. My only general suggestions would be to work organically with small wikis and their most active users to set up the infrastructure so you can make sure they know what they're doing and can look after it. Also make it easier in the documentation here to point out towards Special:EditGrowthConfig, which is the key point of everything. Keep up the good work and let me know if there are any questions you might have. I'd be more than happy to answer them. :) Klein Muçi (talk) 13:53, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello Klein Muçi, and thank you for your message and observations.

I'm happy to know that the Growth features are useful for you and newcomers at your wiki. Let's see how can we work together in order to help small wikis to benefit from these tools!

Communication to small wikis (and even big ones) is a complicated matter. We try to do our best to inform every community about any new change. This can be done through Tech/News, or with direct messages.

I messaged your community last March regarding the deployment. Maybe it was on the wrong page? Maybe my message hasn't been seen in RecentChanges? Let me know how can we improve our processes to communicate with your wiki, so as with all our wikis.

Now that you fortunately found the right page to post your message, I note that we should improve how the communities could contact us as well. The process we designed may not be the best one. Thank you for reporting this!

It is nice that you found the configuration page. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the configuration of our tools, and how can I assist you there. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:55, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that is the correct page. But unfortunately technical notices there are usually ignored by most users. What I suggest would have been a better way (and could be better for the future notices of this kind) is to end the notice with a specific request. For example, your notice before a year could be closed with a request that an admin should modify the Special:EditGrowthConfig page according to the community needs and report back. And then you can check back on all the wikis that haven't gotten an answer of any kind and tag all the most active admins around until you get an answer. Most small wikis have 1 tech-savvy guy who will come and handle the request. Once communication has been established with the said user, it can be tagged on future requests to guarantee faster communication and better tools deployment, using the same method described above. (I do understand this would make it harder to program mass messages though. :/ )

This method is based on our experience on Content Translation Tool. The notices about it were largely ignored until we started having organic conversations with user Amire80. I must disclose that this didn't happen as part of a mass notice though. We specifically mentioned him after one of the messages because one user had seem them and notified some of us on Telegram. Unfortunately in small wikis most of the communication is individual in nature and it tends to happen off-wiki. Klein Muçi (talk) 15:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I have a question: If we want the homepage and help panel features auto-enabled for all users, assuming we have a community discussion about it, where do we ask for such a thing and post the results of that discussion? Klein Muçi (talk) 15:27, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your ideas regarding the communication, they are very important o us so that we can improve our processes.

I should have informed communities more about Special:EditGrowthConfig, not just by relying on Tech/News (I hope you are a subscriber...). I will also reach at Amir about his experience.

Regarding enabling the homepage and the help panel to all users, I need to confirm that you literally mean all users, and not just all new users. If it is really all users, it is not something we have considered to do. We have thought about deploying the features to auto-created accounts (people coming from other wikis) or to returning accounts (accounts created locally, who have edited a few time ago and who resume editing).

It is a nice idea! But we need to think about this new case. What is your idea behind deploying to all users? Is your idea to have a similar experience for everyone? Or to provide some more useful tools to any user? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:40, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I will subscribe now that I learned out about the project.

No, I didn't know you could make that distinction. The aim was for that functionality to be activated to all new users because it would kind of defeat the purpose if we were to expect new users to have to modify their preferences to be able to get help. From my experience, most users have no idea about the preferences link until much later in their wiki-experience. (Another thing that could be added to the homepage maybe?) That's why I said to have it active for all users. But if you can make that distinction technically, I would just vote for having it auto-active for every new account being created. Existing accounts can make the change themselves from the preferences. In my opinion, even anonymous editors should be able to benefit from the help panel (not the homepage). Having the ability to ask for help should be everywhere, in the most obvious cases, for everyone. Then editors, as they gain experience with time, and maybe, subsequently, start to get annoyed by the help offering, will also have learned how to disable it most likely and will do so if they want. But everyone's first contact with The Wiki World should be accompanied with the help offering, even IP editors - at least in my opinion. Klein Muçi (talk) 23:42, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding your wiki, 100% of new accounts get the Growth features.

Of course, these users, when they get more experience can opt-out the features in their preferences. Or they can become mentors!

Regarding IPs, we have thought about offering them some tools, but it appears that there are too many possible complications to make it happen. But just displaying the help panel to IPs would be a first step. However, we are not going in this direction. So I'm afraid that this kind of change would not be done in the coming times. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming that! I wasn't sure of that point and I didn't want to test it out with a new account myself. Okay then, sounds good.

I do understand what you mean because interaction with IPs is generally harder than with normal users. Everything else put aside, just by having dynamic IPs in existence becomes harder knowing who you're talking with. Having said that though I still believe help should be freely accessible by anyone in the easiest way. Even if they never see the answer to their question, it's still a good thing to have questions and to give answers to those questions because other people may see them and learn meanwhile. The more, the merrier. But I'm sure you're aware of more possible technical complications than I'm aware of so...

Thanks a lot for the information provided and the support in answering. :) Klein Muçi (talk) 15:25, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

How to go from A/B testing to "done"

I see that now Newcomer homepage is at A/B testing in ukwiki. During events we have the situation when most people have it in their experience while others don't, and it's a bit uncomfortable.

What's the plan for the future? We are working on some instructional materials and it's good to know whether to include Growth features there as something that every user is to experience.

(Sorry if I missed the answer somewhere on the page.) Ата ^(talk) 08:57, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello!

It is possible to force account creation to provide Growth features to everyone.

Regarding A/B testing, it is still something we are discussing about. It is really important for us to have ways to compare the experience with Growth tools and without it to be sure that we are not impacting the wikis in a negative way. However, some of the features have been tested for a while now; we are waiting for the final report about the impact to deploy to 100% of newcomers.

Not related, I'm taking the opportunity of this discussion: next week we will deploy the mentor dashboard to a few more wikis, and uk.wp is in the list. I'll announce it on Monday. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:07, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

It's 0.5%, not 0.05%

The slide set uploaded here - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E2%80%9CNewcomer_Experience%E2%80%9D_pilot_project_-_Inviting_donors_to_edit_via_email,_LATAM,_July_2021.pdf , for which the Growth Team is listed as a co-author, has a significant error on page 7. The constructive activation "percent of emails" figure is wrong by a factor of ten. John Broughton (talk) 18:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Broughton -- thank you for reading closely and noticing that error! We will fix it and re-upload. What other thoughts did you have as you looked through the slides? Did any of the findings surprise you or give you any ideas about how we might proceed? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 05:33, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @John Broughton - the file has now been updated with the error in slide 7 fixed. A visually-small, but statistically-significant difference! LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 08:34, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Use of Growth on wikipedia occitan

HI, I tried to use Growth on the occitan Wikipedia but text is in catalan. How can I do to translate the text ? Guilhelma (talk) 18:26, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Guilhelma: See https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-growthexperiments&language=oc&filter=&action=page. First you need to create a new account, make some test translations in a certain sandbox, and then see if you become a translator at https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Log?type=translatorsandbox&user=&page=&wpdate=&tagfilter=&wpfilters%5B%5D=newusers. --Paloi Sciurala (talk｜contribs) 19:14, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, I have an account on TranslateWiki, so I can begin immediatly Guilhelma (talk) 19:26, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Find out the mentor of a given user

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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A question that came up with us, in the Hebrew Wikipedia:

How do I find out who is the mentor of a given user?

Thank you!

מקף־‽‏ (Hyphen) · ^מקף Hyphen _෴ · 16:56, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@מקף Hey, thanks for bringing that up here! This should be covered at this help page, which covers how to integrate mentorship with existing on-wiki tools via templates. To summarize, there's a magic word, #mentor, that can be used to determine the mentor for a particular user. For example, you would get my mentor by using {{#mentor:Martin Urbanec (WMF)}}.

Let me know if you have any other questions about this feature. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you!🙂 · ^מקף Hyphen _෴ · 20:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

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

Another question about mentors (he:wiki)

Hey there.

Is there any way to show only newbies who have not been blocked for vandalism?

Thanks Niles Anderssøn (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you for your question.

You mean showing people blocked for other reasons than vandalism, or people who aren't blocked? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 20:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey, no.

I mean, when someone (a newbie) has registered, I (or every other volunteer) automatically appointed as his/her "mentor". If, sadly though it surely happens, he/she turns out to be a "troll", and blocked, its username remains as one of my "apprentices" (there must be a better word for it, mustn't it?).

So I just wondered, if is there any way to sort-of "delete" such a person from the list?

Thanks again Niles Anderssøn (talk) 21:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello @אנדרסן, thanks for bringing that up. The dashboard should not show any users who are indefinitely blocked. In my opinion, that should filter the trolls out correctly. Do you want to delete other users, that are not indefinitely blocked, too? Note the dashboard updates every three hours, so you might see some blocked users before the next update runs.

Does this make sense? Let me know if you have any other questions.

PS: The newcomers are usually called "mentees" when talking about the mentorship-related features. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 11 December 2021 (UTC)