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

old newcomer homepage!

25
Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

I miss the old newcomer homepage! All i wanted on my newcomer homepage was my total edit count and that was there yesterday, but is gone today! please restore that.

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

@Iljhgtn Thanks for the feedback!

I'm glad to hear that you appreciated the previous homepage, but I'm sorry to hear that you found the recent change disruptive. My name is Kirsten, and I'm the Product Manager of the WMF Growth team (the team responsible for the newcomer homepage).

I assume this is about the update we made to the "Your impact" module on the homepage, correct? The image here shows an example of the previous design and the new design.

One downside of the new design is that the Total edits count is capped at 999+ for editors with over 999 edits. However, we plan to fix that, and we'll work on the improvement ASAP based on your feedback. Here's the task:T338174: The impact module should display the real numbers instead of capped numbers

Basically many of the metrics on the new Impact module (like the Thanks received count, Best streak, etc.) are being calculated for the new Impact module, and needed to have some sort of reasonable cap. But the "Total edit count" is a metric that we don't need to calculate, so we can start showing the true total rather than the capped metric.

Do you have any feedback about the other changes? Are any of those other metrics interesting or helpful? Are there other metrics or data visualizations that you wish were included? Thanks again for the feedback!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

thanks. thats all that i was hoping for was not the capped 999. have a great night.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

just maybe put the true total at the top of the module too and not at the bottom. it helps to be able to see it really quickly at a glance.

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

Thanks for the response!

Yes, the true total will display at the top of the module once we make the update. Actually it looks like that image I shared has a slightly older design, as we no longer show the total edit count at the bottom too.

A Growth team software engineer worked on the task today, and hopefully by next week you'll see the fix on your homepage. Thanks again for providing feedback, and for your patience as we make improvements.

And please feel free to let us know if you have any other feedback about the homepage. Thanks!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

this is really responsive. i had no idea that the wmf was so responsive and helpful. i would love to make more suggestions at some point. where is the right place to do that?

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

@Iljhgtn If you have suggestions about the Newcomer homepage, then this Talk page is the place to do it. :)

If it's about editor onboarding or features meant for newer editors, the Growth team would love the feedback! Talk:Growth is probably our most active talk page, but you can post a message on any of our team pages and we'll be sure to respond.

We can't always take immediate action on community feedback, especially if it's about a larger idea or feature that we aren't currently working on. But we love to receive suggestions and ideas from newer editors, and we'll always respond. If we can't prioritize the suggestion, we can always document the idea for future consideration.

If you have suggestions that don't relate to the Growth team, we can always direct you to the correct team, or you learn more about each WMF Product team here: Wikimedia Product (there are also Wikimedia Technology teams and many other departments within WMF: Wikimedia_Foundation_departments).

Thanks again for taking the time to send us feedback about the newcomer Homepage! We've been discussing ways to make the Homepage more useful as editors progress and get more familiar with the wikis. I hope that eventually the Homepage can be personalized and have tools for more advanced editors and patrollers. So definitely let me know if you have any feedback about what would have helped you out as you were getting started or what features you wish were introduced on the Homepage earlier (Wikipedia Library, Patrolling, WikiProjects, Edit-a-thons and Wiki events in your area, etc.).

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

i like the newcomer homepage overall, and plan to keep it forever if i am allowed to. it is very helpful as a launchpad to being productive on wikipedia in the morning.

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

You will definitely be able to keep the newcomer homepage enabled indefinitely, and I'm so glad to hear that it's a good launchpad to being productive!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

i have not seen the change go into effect yet. is that happening soon?

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

@Iljhgtn Sorry for the delay, the Impact module change will be visible by the end of the day on Thursday.

It looks like the patch has now been merged, but you won't see an update yet because Mediawiki changes are released via a Deployment Train. That means that you can test changes on beta Wikipedia and test Wikipedia today (Example of the new impact module on beta Wikipedia). But the change won't be visible on English Wikipedia until Thursday. Sorry for the delay, but the deployment train schedule helps ensure we have time to test changes before they are released more widely.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

thursday is great.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

i checked and it has not yet been updated. it is now friday where i live.

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

Oh no, sorry, I goofed. It looks like the code was merged after the release train cut-off last week, so it will be visible on English Wikipedia next Thursday (November 16th). For urgent fixes, there is another backport process we could have followed the get the change out sooner, but it takes more engineering time to schedule and attend the backport windows.

I still find the release train schedule confusing, sorry to mislead you!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

thank you for updating me.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

so it should be today then correct? i still do not see it. i only see the "999+" still in my homepage in the top leftside uppermost box.

Tacsipacsi (talkcontribs)

It should become (and not be!) correct over the course of this day. And it did, around 7pm UTC; I now see my total count on enwiki (which is over 1,000).

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

this is it. good work whoever made this happen!

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

Hurrah! Sorry for providing a misleading timeline initially.

Thanks all goes to @Martin Urbanec (WMF). Thanks, Martin!

And thanks again, @Iljhgtn, for providing feedback!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

glad it was done. it was still pretty fast.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

Looks like someone moved my cheese again!

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

Is there a way that I could customize the newcomer homepage to not have the "suggested edits" window? I like the "impact" window a lot, but it is no longer near the top of the page and was moved down so now i need to scroll down the page.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

This is not a significant problem, but it was another change that I did not ask for.

KStoller-WMF (talkcontribs)

@Iljhgtn Sorry for yet another frustration! The Growth team hasn't changed anything that I'm aware of that would have caused this... I might be jumping to conclusions, but I'm wondering if the layout change relates to the "Accessibility for Reading (Vector 2022)" Beta feature that is being tested by another team currently. If you disable the beta feature (via Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures) is the layout back to what you expected? Or can you just hide that "Tools" side panel? If that doesn't help, can you provide a screenshot so I can help troubleshoot?

As for totally disabling the Suggested Edits module on the Homepage, that's not currently possible but that's something the Growth team has discussed before. Ideally eventually there are more modules on the Homepage and they can be customized and disabled/enabled based on personal preferences. I've just added a task to represent this work: T353301. I'm unsure when that work can be prioritized, but it is part of our long-term vision for the Homepage. Do you think this would be helpful? What other information or tools would you like to see on your Homepage?

In the meantime, @Trizek (WMF) might be able to suggest some CSS to hide that module. Or you could navigate to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Impact/ to see only your Impact module.

Iljhgtn (talkcontribs)

i like the setup, but i like being able to add or subtract modules/windows from the homepage. i like the impact part the most. that lets me know how i am helping build wikipedia and makes me feel good. :)

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