Growth/Growth 2014

The purpose of the Growth team was to find ways to attract and retain Wikipedia editors. The team launched on April 16, 2012 as the Editor Engagement Experiments team, and in 2013 changed their name to more clearly reflect their goal (rather than methodology). It was wrapped up in October 2014, with the team moving to the Collaboration team, the Mobile Web team, and others. In 2018, the Collaboration team changed its missions, hence it changed its name for Growth.

Growth To create sustainable growth in the community of editors on Wikimedia projects. Group: Features Start: 2012-04-16 End: 2014-10-03 Team members: Matt Flaschen, Aaron Halfaker, Kaity Hammerstein, Rob Moen, Sam Smith, Moiz Syed, Steven Walling Management: Terry Chay (EPM)

Team

• Matt Flaschen (Software Engineer)
• Aaron Halfaker (Research Scientist)
• Kaity Hammerstein (Associate Interaction Designer)
• Rob Moen (Software Engineer)
• Sam Smith, (Software Engineer)
• Moiz Syed (Interaction Designer)
• Steven Walling (Product Manager)

Our work

If you're interested in what we're currently working on, please review our 2013-14 Goals and the list of projects below, which are broken down by which area of the user lifecycle they address.

Acquisition of new users:

• Anonymous editor acquisition
• Account creation user experience and login redesign
• Timestamp position modification
• Editor campaigns

Activation & Retention of new users:

• Guided tours
• Onboarding new Wikipedians
• Wikipedia article creation and a new Draft namespace
• Post-edit feedback
• Task recommendations

Reactivation of existing users:

• Necromancy

What we do

Growth is just what it sounds like. This team's job is to expand the Wikipedia editor community. The team’s yearly target is a number of new editors, rather than particular features. Learn more about our 2013-14 goals and plans and check out the list of projects below too.

Our work officially started in April 2012. For about our first year, we were known as "Editor Engagement Experiments" or "e3". See announcement and coverage in The Signpost. We decided this name was too long-winded and confusing. It also focuses on our method of working, as opposed to our goal.

List of projects

Core features that other WMF teams are building, like Flow and notifications, lay the groundwork for a healthy community that includes many new editors. The Growth team builds on this by giving people a compelling reason to join our wikis, and showing them how to make their first contributions to the encyclopedia. Together, they work in concert (along with mobile, multimedia improvements, VisualEditor, and more) to provide a modern, cohesive experience for Wikipedia editors.

1.  Done: Testing new user warnings to improve their effectiveness at communicating to editors
2.  Done: Necromancy -- emailing lapsed editors and asking them to return
3.  Done: Timestamp position modification -- testing whether a visible, linked, human readable timestamp improves edits on articles
4.  Done: Editor milestones -- thanking editors here on English Wikipedia that have made their first 1,000 edits to articles
5.  Done: Post-edit feedback -- testing whether various feedback mechanisms improve editor activity
6.  Done: Community Portal redesign -- testing various redesigns to the Community Portal that will make it a more useful space for editors
7.  Done: Redesigning account creation and login -- simple changes to improve and streamline the account creation and login process
8.  Done: Onboarding new Wikipedians -- onboarding, a term borrowed from human resources parlance, means to introduce brand new contributors to Wikipedia and show them how to edit. See also: w:Wikipedia:GettingStarted
9.  Done: Guided tours -- providing tooltip-like tours of the Wikipedia experience, see also w:Help:Guided tours
10. In progress Anonymous editor acquisition -- discerning who anonymous (IP) editors are, and how we can entice more of them to register
11. In progress Task suggestions for enticing new and existing contributors back to Wikipedia to help improve the encyclopedia
12. Planned: Article creation incl. work on Drafts -- thousands of new Wikipedians join with the goal of starting a new article. Let's fix the process for doing so.

Where do I go if I have comments, ideas, or further questions?

We want to hear what you think! The best places to ask are (in rough order):

1. The associated Talk page here. If you think a feature might be new, then be sure to check the village pumps, where we post announcements about new deployments.
2. Join the public mailing list about editor engagement. We are active there.
3. In IRC at #wikimedia-growth ^connect, especially for the more technically minded among you.

See also

• Our research and data analysis documentation on Meta
• You can find us on IRC (#wikimedia-growth ^connect) and on the public editor engagement mailing list.
• Our public planning board on Trello
• Notes and slides from our our Quarterly Reviews
• Our team retrospectives