User:ARipstra (WMF)/draft

Rationale

Our wikis are nothing without their communities, and retention of new and existing editors alike has been a perennial challenge. There are a very large number of contribution tasks across our wikis, and they vary considerably in their approachability, scalability, and how much they contribute to editors' retention or burn-out. Almost all tasks and workflows involve the platform maintained by the Foundation (edits, diffs, templates, categories, …); some tasks are supported directly with native tools maintained by the Foundation (the citoid service, the OTRS e-mail ticket system, the page views tool); some use near-native tools created and maintained by community members (gadgets and user scripts), or more full "second party" tools (RTRC, AWB, Twinkle, etc.); finally, some use "third party" tools (browser spell checkers, browser extensions like Grammarly, and so on). Some tasks require a lot of experience, domain knowledge, social capital within the community, having the right tools, or other key items. On-boarding to these tasks can thus require these needs to be met, but without proper support editors can fail to get "in". Similarly once using the tools, editors can be frustrated by lack of workflow support and eventually leave. Understanding what we have is key to building better editing experiences.

Who is working on it? Who will use it?

Between February and June, 2018, Abbey, James and Carolyn from the Wikimedia Foundation, along with a team of Wikipedia Ambassadors (revi from KO:Wiki, Martin from CS:Wiki, Benoît from FR:Wiki and Satdeep from HI:Wiki) worked to create the frameworks and initial set of workflows in the contribution taxonomy.

This tool was built initially to help Wikimedia Foundation product teams, particularly the mobile App and Web teams, navigate the many, workflows of Wikipedias, and focus in on the most important workflows to build in order to provide better mobile contribution experience for people. However, anyone can use and add to the contribution taxonomy. It is hoped that people will add more of the workflows for Wikipedia, and contribute the workflows of their Wikipedias and other Wiki projects, that were initially out of scope. Below, we describe what can be done with the contribution taxonomy, and how to do it.

What does the contribution taxonomy consist of?

The contribution taxonomy has two parts the Master Inventory and the workflow builder.

• The master inventory is a large list of activities and workflow that are done for editing and other contributions. The master inventory also includes:
  • Two sets of selection criteria: one, called Current user difficulty used to assess the level of skills a person currently needs to accomplish the activities and workflows, and another set, called Mobile potential ability used to assess the potential for a workflow to be accomplished on a mobile device.
  • A weighting system is used for product teams, or anyone using the master inventory, to weight the importance of the criteria against the other criteria, in order to focus prioritization on a certain audience and that audiences' particular needs.
• Workflow builder consists of a set of visual building blocks used to visualize the details of workflows so they can be understood in the same way by multidisciplinary teams working on them, and anyone who wants to learn about them. There is a growing set of visualized workflows here.

For the initial scope, the team selected to study the English, Hindi, Czech, Korean, and French Wikipedias. Non-Wikipedias, community governance processes, and fiscal contribution workflows were out of scope for this first round.

How does one navigate the parts of the contribution taxonomy?

Below are detailed descriptions of how to navigate the master inventory, and detailed descriptions of the selection criteria and weighting system.

Navigating the master inventory

Start by opening the Master inventory and click on the "Goals/Motivations" tab.

Goals/Motivations tab

• Wikipedia workflows start with a broad Goal or Motivation

Activities tab

• After identifying or recognizing a motivation/goal, there are several groups of Activities to choose from.

Open the Workflows tab, and look at column A, Focus

Focus (column A)

• The next step is deciding what to Focus on

Decision (column B)

• Once a focus is chosen, then, a decision is made about what action to take.

Tasks (column C) and Workflows (column D)

• Next, a Task is chosen. Each Task can be done through a number of Workflows; choose between workflows based on some understanding of the task.

Steps (column W)

• Each Workflow is broken down into one or more Steps
  • Each Step can be done by a different person. In some cases, all steps can be done by the same person.
  • Each Step is numbered based on the point in the sequence. Step 1 happens first, then 2, then 3, and so on. Not all steps will exist on all wikis.
    • Some steps have alternatives, which are shown as different sub-steps, for example, 1a, 1b, 1c.
    • Not all alternatives will exist on all wikis.
    • Only one sub-step is taken at a decision point; if the user needs to do two different things, they are different Steps.
    • Some Steps are optional and might often not happen. These are shown in square brackets, like "[2.]".

Tools (column X)

• Tools listed in this column are needed to accomplish the Steps listed in the previous column.
• The tools column describes more details about workflows:
  • Workflows that end in Steps are marked "ends", or if they convert to a different sequence of steps, they are marked as “Transfer to other workflow”.
  • Sometimes workflows will "end" with optional follow-up tasks that could still be done.
  • Some Steps can be done multiple times by multiple people, like "Comment in the discussion".
  • Where the same Step is done but a different page/template is used for a process based on the local wiki/language, that counts as the same step.
  • If the decision is different, the step is shown as an alternative in the Tool column.
  • Some Steps can be done either "manually" in one or more ways, or via a special tool. These are split out as different rows, in the Tool column.

Wiki needs (column AR)

• Some Steps require the wiki is configured in a special way or has a specific gadget/tool (marked in column “Wiki needs”).

User needs (column AS) and User rights (column AT)

• Some steps require special user real-world or off-wiki attributes like having e-mail set up (marked in column User needs), or special on-wiki user rights (marked in column User rights).

Which Wiki? (Columns Z–AD)

• If a Step takes place on a wiki, it is marked it with "✅"
• If it can happen but it's rare, it is marked with "🤷🏽"
• If it doesn't happen at all, it is marked with "🚫".
• Not all workflows will exist on all wikis.
• Each workflow is rated with roughly how many times it happens a day on each wiki (marked in columns R, S, T, U, V as  ~ # a day).

Key to codes and abbreviations:

TODO: Move this out to its own page.

Codes

Column Y contains codes that define the step and tool combination. Below is the key to the codes:

• T = Tag
  • T1 = add tag to a page with no special justification/details
  • T2 = add tag to a page along with a justification for the tag
• E = Edit (can be editing of any kind of page)
  • E1 = edit a page to add a listing or a link (an indication of “hey this should get done”)
  • E2 = notify people on a talk page about some workflow step (a way of drawing attention)
  • E3 = contest a process by editing the article talk page
  • E4 = review a page and its talk page and un-tag it
  • E5 = comment in a discussion or listing
  • E6 =  go to page, review article and deletion discussion about it, then remove the tag and close the discussion (this is almost always disagreeing with a centralized discussion).
  • E7 = edit content pages as appropriate (linking wiki pages, adding references, etc)
  • E8 = adding or removing categories via wikitext
  • E9 = remove a listing and/or archive it
• G = gadget
  • G1 = gadget with UX control and explicit step
  • G2 = a multi functional gadget and you have to know what to type in, you have to figure it out, and it usually needs a justification
  • G3= step performed by a gadget or bot without user having to input

for example: posting on someone’s talk page automatically

• D = Delete
  • D1= delete without having to do other work - tag is on the page already, you press delete button
  • D2= review a page and it’s talk page and delete it based on your review
  • D3 = have close the discussion in which it deletion was discussed, and delete the article
  • D4 = close deletion discussion but cannot act on it
  • D5 = a history merge
  • D6 = delete all of a user’s content
• C = Create
  • C1 = create a project page for a workflow
  • C2 = create a content page about x topic (all article workflow steps fit under this)
  • C3 = use the content translation tool
• W1 = Workflow
  • W1= workflow switch
  • W2 = workflow from backlog
• S = Suppress
  • S1= push suppression button
  • S2 = push suppression button with response to comms channel (yes or no)
• A1= Ask a question
  • A1= ask someone to do something via built in e-mail form
  • A2 = ask someone to do something via IRC
  • A3 = ask someone to do something via some other communication tool (Facebook, etc.)
  • A4 = respond to inbound request saying “no”
  • A5 = email someone through your own eamail system
• R1= Read
  • R1= read through a form (wizard) and adding content into boxes
• M = Move
  • M1 = move an article
  • M2 = copy paste a page
• L = Language links
  • L1 = language link within Wikipedia
  • L2 = language link within Wikidata
• B = Books
  • B1= create a book
  • B2 = add a page to a book
  • B3 = finalize a book
  • B4 = download book as PDF
• P = Patrol
  • P1 = patrolling find something to follow up on whilst patrolling
  • P2 = automated system that does patrolling
  • P3 = mark page as patrolled
• B = Block
  • B1 = block
• U = Undo
  • U1 = undo via roll back via tool
  • U2 = undo manually
  • U3 = undo using a specialist tool

Abbreviations

PROD =  proposal deletion process

When words are BOLD, indicates either “switch to another workflow” or “End”

Text is Darker when you aren’t required to do the step and software isn’t able to do it. It is also used for when a gadget is used.

Notes

• when editing is concerned, (for example, the C2 tool) where the description is not explicit about tool, the assumption is the use of the 2017 wikitext editor.
• This taxonomy operates under the assumption that all talk pages are not structured discussions, but talk pages.

Understanding the assessment criteria

The assessment criteria was designed to assess each step and workflow in order to select the most important steps and workflows to focus on for a particular project or team.

The criteria is divided into two sets:

• Current User Difficulty asses the skill levels needed to accomplish the workflows or steps. These specific criteria are:
  • Process familiarity: How visible and clear is the process? What's the learning curve like?
  • Technical comfort: Is much technical experience needed for me to be comfortable taking part?
  • Community feeling: How much understanding of the community and its values do I need to do this?
  • Personal social capital: Do I need to have and spend my personal social capital to make this happen?
  • Domain knowledge: How much familiarity with the content's or policy's topic you I need to have to be able to participate?
• Mobile potential ability criteria assesses if the step or workflow is most or least suitable across to be built for mobile. The specific criteria are:
  • Parallel activities: Do I need to have many things open at once to do this?
  • Detail/high context (small screen issues): Is there a lot of context, where I might need to repeatedly zoom out and in to understand it?
  • Temporal length (continuous use issues): Do I have to do this all at once, or can I do a little and then come back?
  • Tied steps (continuous use issues): Must I do lots of steps in succession, or is it one-and-done?
  • Precision needed (touch screen issues): How important is very careful pixel-perfect / key sequence precision to the task?
• There are also some measures about scale included within the master inventory:
  • How many times does this workflow happen per day? (columns R, S, T, U, V)
  • Does this step, using this tool, happen on every wiki, or just one/some? (columns Z, AA, AB, AC, AD)
  • What kind of step is this? Does it repeat very often? (column Y contains codes that identify each step as a type. The key to those codes are here.)
  • Do I need any special rights / access to do this? (column AT)
  • Do I need a special tool to take part here? (column X)
  • Does this only work if my wiki has this set up? (column AR)
  • Do I need anything as a user to do this? (column AS)

How the weighting system works

TODO

What can be done with the contribution taxonomy?

Use the current contribution taxonomy

• Learn about the details of a specific step or workflow.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Assess one Wiki's workflows against another Wiki's workflows.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• See what is described about your wiki's workflows and steps (Czech, English, French, Hindi, Korean)
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Find a complete visualization of a workflow or step.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• select the most important workflows and steps for a specific project.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.

Add to the contribution taxonomy

• Visualize a step or workflow that is not already visualized.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Share a visualization you created.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Add a new wiki's workflows to the master inventory.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Score newly added workflows and steps.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.
• Add another team to the weighting matrix.
  • TODO: Example of how this would be done.

Archive

See deliverables and project plan from the work done in the initial project.