Hello!
I activated the homepage some days ago as you know together with the other growth features. I had a question about the homepage tab though. Is it supposed to be there only to give edit suggestions? I was following some of its suggestions thinking they would end after a while but they didn't. I'm not sure if you're supposed to have different features in it other than suggestions or not. Either way is good, I am just curious.
Hello
Suggested edits are the most important element at the homepage. This is how we provide work to newcomers, and, based on their favorite topics and the type of maintenance tasks they like to work on, the number of tasks can virtually be endless.
The Homepage has other modules:
Yes, those were the modules I was seeing. My idea was that at first you get work suggestions to make you start, from easy to hard, the difficulty auto-progressing after a certain number of edits has been reached. After you "finish" the hard edits and hit, for example, 100 edit "tasks" completed in that difficulty, that module gets removed from the main view, maybe minimized to the side, and in its place you get information automatically about your work in wiki, similar to the impact module. For example, you may have stats for your overall contributions, the maintenance categories you have helped clean up (a very bad example just to send the point), etc.
I mean, the current interface works very well for newcomers, showcasing their impact for motivation, giving them tasks to do and providing easy ways to contact a mentor. But after a user gets past that phase, the whole page becomes more or less obsolete. I remember reading some days ago at Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer homepage, that it will provide, among other things, a way for it to work as a "structured user page", a "profile", which was what really caught my interest. Only now I see that it is listed on "Future versions". I had missed that part and was expecting it to change according to my experience level after I had "proved it to it" by completing some tasks.
In my opinion the homepage feature is something that has been missing from Wikipedia for a long time, finally giving you the possibility of having "a profile", and it can have benefits past just helping newcomers, being utilized as a profile to auto-showcase the user's info, work and merits. This step can also suppress a bit the multiple fake account creation process by one user (we're not talking about anonymous accounts but accounts with names such as lkasjdfjkasd or vulgar terms) by bringing more integrity to the account itself, far past just "a red link with your name on it" as many user see it.
The experience can also be gamified if we want, making users get experience points for tasks and unlocking new ranks for themselves which come with graphical changes and added privileges. First you start as a newcomer and you have a small symbol that showcases that. This will also be reflected in your homepage content. Then you advance to an intermediate rank which has another small symbol and another homepage content + added privileges. This already is a process that's currently happening in many Wikis where you get autopatrolled privileges after a certain number of good edits. Then you may go to advanced ranks which come with the aforementioned changes + the possibility of requesting adminship, just an example. Or you can have individual stats for each namespace and, after working enough in the category namespace, you unlock "category master" rank and get the possibility of requesting category mover privileges beside having a badge showcase that. The homepage then shows content related to categories to make your work easier with that. This, of course, can be as "secret" as we want it to be. The visual effects can be added or not depending on if they'll be helpful on the overall experience or not (usually, knowing which users are better for one specific thing is helpful) and that's the same with the added privileges part. But I think the homepage feature should be there forever providing specialized content to your liking and experience.
In our initial thinking about the Homepage, we have said that it should remain flexible enough to allow some evolution. We haven't resumed our thinking on it. At the moment, we don't have much users who have performed +100 edits using our features. We observe some people who still use the Homepage to make suggested edits among with other types of tasks not listed there.
The "structured user page" idea was to allow newcomers to introduce themselves to the community. However, we haven't pursued in this direction since the objective was not to have newcomers having nice user pages (it is fun, but not helping Wikipedia), but to have newcomers making good first edits (which helps!). The last time we informally discussed about this structured userpage idea, we were around the idea of automatically displaying achievements on the user page, such as the number of edits made, the number of thanks received, etc. It could be a way to gamify, but we also need to be aware of the fact that some users will play the quantity game instead of the quality game. What is the point to encourage users to reach (let's say) 100 edits if they make poor quality edits?
At the moment, we are not focusing on the Homepage, but on "Add an image". Have you heard about this project? It is a task aiming to help newcomers to make constructive edits, with a bit of gamification. We would be curious to have your opinion about it.
Thanks for the insight. I do think it would better even from an utilitarian point of view if users started out with a "premade" profile/userpage though (instead of the redlink). The "missing userpage" it's not only strange but confusing as well from the point of view of the new users. For them is hard to understand the change between "the account", "the preferences" and the "user page", at least from my experience with them in the edit-a-thons that we've made. (Many users spend literally years without ever knowing about the existence of the preferences tab.) The homepage does provide a framework for that and I'd really hope that in the future those 3 concepts I mentioned above could be "fused" in it.
Achievements (and the whole gamifying experience) were in the "extra part", just building upon the current impact module. I wouldn't call it a "quantity game". If you noticed, I've typed "good edits" above just because of that. Those edits would only count if they were approved by other experienced users. Again, something built upon the current system that we have. Going from "user" to "autopatrolled user" requires exactly that, even technically. And then, for most wikis, a similar thing is required for admin privileges. This would only give the technical tools to better manage the process (which is already done through tools like: https://admin.toolforge.org/tool/sulinfo, etc.) But that was just a brainstorm. My insistence is just on having a more crystallized profile.
Yes, I had read about the image task. It's a useful thing. In edit-a-thons, after I'm done explaining how to write articles with wikicode (which lately has transformed to how to translate articles with CX and VE), the first questions that I get asked are about images and references. Populating articles with images can prove beneficial for the user and the community. My only general suggestion would be that, whatever is the final outcome, it should contain buttons instead of links. Buttons give you the urge to press them which helps in engagement and exploration. Wikipedia's interface suffers a lot from the lack of buttons which is why many users don't even know about the existence of preferences, what I mentioned above.
I agree regarding how complicated it is. I personally skip the existence of the userpage at workshops. :p At French Wikipedia where I'm a mentor since 10 years now (wow, time flies!), I see that most newcomers don't have one and don't need one. They would have one later, if they really start editing, or if the account is a brand name (they think it is the actual article).
Maybe we could have a more centralized place for user profiling, with, as you suggest, preferences, account management and user profile. But is goes too far for the Growth team's goals. Maybe you should suggest it as a community wishlist project?
> Those edits would only count if they were approved by other experienced users.
We have observed that at wikis where FlaggedRevisions are enabled that the edits remain unchecked sometimes for years. It is really a problem at a lot of wikis, where the workforce is too low. :/
Regarding buttons, I think it is a way to urge people too. But I think it forces them to rush on the task instead of understanding it. We have conducted some user testings, with people who aren't editors, and apparently links where fine with them.
Yes, that's true. Especially the part about brands. Apparently that's a globally shared detail. As for buttons/links... Okay then. You have more data than me. :P
