Topic on Talk:Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer homepage

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T275622

I got the idea that the same type of mechanical headlines can negatively affect the mood of both mentors and newcomers.

Often times, mentor talk pages are composed of only such headings. People suggested to me that it seems that bots are writing to you (regardless of the content of the question). This can have a negative effect in the long term, since bots are less interested in responding than humans.

I think to ask a question about this topic to the Russian mentors, but I am writing here, as maybe someone will also be interested in this possible problem.

@Trizek (WMF), what do you think about it? :)

Perhaps, by the way, this is why many mentors want to move questions to another page.

I can understand the effect on mentors, but I'm less sure about the effect on mentees. I won't say that mentees will notice a difference. They are only looking for an answer.

We tried to ask mentees to add a title, and it was not really a success: imagine a page with only headers all the same: "Question". :D

In you opinion, what would be the alternative? We can't pass on the username, since it is the only way to make a difference between two comments. Have something like "Question (26)" may be as boring as the current state.

Mentors want ot move questions to other pages? I don't remember you mentioning it - but I may be wrong!

> I won't say that mentees will notice a difference. They are only looking for an answer.

It seems to me that mentees still look at the mentor's talk page, and such topics kill the appearance of live communication. 1. One gets the impression that this is how the topics should be named. 2. It seems that the mentor is only answering questions from newcomers. These are just my guesses.

> We tried to ask mentees to add a title, and it was not really a success: imagine a page with only headers all the same: "Question". :D

Oh, was there such an experiment? I didn't know about this, and thought to offer this idea in this capacity :) So let's forget about this idea :)

> In you opinion, what would be the alternative?

I thought about it, and could not come up with anything good. Maybe take time out of the header?

> Mentors want ot move questions to other pages? I don't remember you mentioning it - but I may be wrong!

Yes, I didn’t tell you about it because I don’t like this idea and I decided to deal with it later. I mentioned this to Olga in our interview.

In general, a month or two ago, one mentor left the project, because she really did not like that questions from newcomers cluttered the page. She asked if they could be moved to another place, I said not yet.

Two reasons why I don't like this idea: 1. Communicating on the talk pages, the mentees immediately gets used to our discussion system: that all questions should be on the talk page 2. It will be very difficult for other mentors to follow other people's pages if they are all in different places.

Well, some mentors are only replying to mentees, since most of their interactions with the reste of the community is done on community pages. I can understand the feeling you describe though.

Taking the timestamp out of the header would be a solution. I have to ask if it is possible, since we use this header to identify the comment as being unique and we use it to display the link to this comment on the mentee's Homepage (If I remember correctly).

> Taking the timestamp out of the header would be a solution. I have to ask if it is possible, since we use this header to identify the comment as being unique and we use it to display the link to this comment on the mentee's Homepage (If I remember correctly).

Yes, this can be a problem :( But we can use a Anchor template for this purpose: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Шаблон:Якорь. Or simple tag with special ID.

Hi @Iniquity -- the reason we included the timestamp is because sometimes mentees ask multiple questions to their mentors, and we thought that mentors would want a way to distinguish between them from the table of contents. We thought timestamps would be most helpful, more than ID numbers.

Hi, @MMiller (WMF) :) Thanks for the explanation, timestamps most helpful, more than ID numbers, you are right.

What would be the risk of someone removing these anchors by accident?

I think the risk is exactly the same as if someone wants to rename the topic :)

I asked other mentors, and they are not perceiving it as a problem.

Could you provide links to direct feedback from users, so that I can get the context?

w:ru:Обсуждение проекта:Помощь начинающим/Наставники#Можно освободить СОУ?.

It is a big page. :)

I created a task to track the issue. But as of now, this not something I have seen elsewhere.

Thank! This is not a priority, but let it be written somewhere :)