Growth/Growth team updates

Growth Features	Use the tools			Updates	Projects	Growth Team

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Discover the existing Features Help pages and resources around the Features Project's last news Current initiatives and strategic thinking about building the Features or creating resources. Who we are Newcomer homepage Newcomer tasks Structured tasks Focus on help desk Welcome survey FAQ General help and resources How to use the Features Help panel Enable the Homepage Suggested edits Add a link Add an image Help resources for mentors Create and configure the mentors' list How to interact with newcomers How to claim a mentee Help resources for communities Get the tools at your wiki Translate the interface Create help contents Community configuration Growth team updates Deployments Data on impact Newsletter Structured tasks: Add a link Structured tasks: Add an image Structured tasks: Copyediting Mentor dashboard Growth features and Wikisource Growth features and Wikivoyage Positive reinforcement Team Contact

This page contains updates on the Growth team's work to increase new editor activation and retention. The planning for this work began in June 2018. The team works on multiple projects at a time, but they will all be discussed on this page.

Growth team updates Updates on multiple projects to increase new editor retention Group: Growth Start: 2018-07-01 Team members: Gergő Tisza (senior software engineer), Benoît Evellin (community relations specialist), Elena Tonkovidova (QA engineer), Dennis Mburugu (engineering manager), Sergio Gimeno (software engineer), Kirsten Stoller (product manager), Mariya Shilova (Senior Technical Program Manager), Kosta Harlan (senior software engineer), Morten Warncke-Wang (data analyst), Rita Ho (UX designer)

How to get involved

It is important that our work is grounded in the reality of the communities we hope to help. If you have thoughts or ideas around this project or our team's work, please comment on this project's talk page.

Project updates

Updates for 2023 are listed below, from this page. Watch 2023 updates. ● See also the Release Timeline ● Growth team updates: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.

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Update 2023-01-27: Positive reinforcement, SpecialPages, PageTriage, & Mentorship

• Positive Reinforcement
  • We added more details to the Positive Reinforcement project page about some initial experiment data (T323788).  And we’ve now gathered enough data that we can start the full experiment analysis (T327581).  
  • We’ve been busy finishing Impact module work (T222310). The Growth team is now shifting to focus on Leveling Up work (T317813) and Personalized Praise work (T317817).  
• Growth SpecialPages
  • Now you can find all Growth SpecialPages together under “Growth tools” on Special:SpecialPages.
  • Check Special:NewcomerTasksInfo for an overview of which topics newcomers are editing on your wiki.
• PageTriage
  • The Moderator Tools team is gradually taking over ownership of PageTriage and has a project planned to work on improvements to PageTriage.
  • In the meantime the Growth team added some better baseline instrumentation: PageTriage Debugging Grafana dashboard (T324747).  
• Mentorship
  • When someone wants to sign up as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria (T321500).

Update 2023-01-19: Newcomer experience projects & Positive reinforcement update

• Newcomer experience projects
  • The Growth team has been partnering with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments aimed at increasing new editor activation and retention. An overview of the four main projects completed are available here: Newcomer experience projects
• Positive reinforcement
  • There are three parts to the Positive reinforcement project, and we are nearly complete with the first. The work needed to complete the new Impact module is almost complete (T222310). The Growth team is now shifting to focus on Leveling Up (T317813) and Personalized Praise (T317817).  
• Welcome survey
  • On January 30th, we will deploy the welcome survey to Vietnamese Wikipedia (T325376). After this update, all language editions of Wikipedia with Growth tools enabled will receive the Welcome survey.
• Newcomer experience + New article creation
  • A few Growth team members are meeting with New Pages Patrol representatives and other English wikipedia community members to discuss improvements for newcomers who come to the wikis primarily interested in article creation (meeting details). The Growth team hopes to learn more about current NPP challenges and consider how a project around Article Creation for Newcomers fits into the plans of the Growth team. If this project is prioritized we will spend more time gathering feedback from other wikis and especially focus on feedback from new editors.

Update 2023-01-13: Positive reinforcement updates and Mentorship improvement

• Positive Reinforcement
  • We released several Impact module improvements including a change to the logic of how we are displaying “Total edits” (T325216).
  • The new Impact module is still being A/B tested on Pilot wikis. We will conduct a thorough analysis once the experiment has run long enough to gather retention metrics, but in the meantime the impact module leading indicators appear healthy.
  • Thanks has been added to Watchlists, Contributions, and Recent Changes (T51541, T90404). We will soon work on design ideas for improvements to the confirmation step (T315859).  
• Mentorship
  • We have worked on a few changes recently to help ensure that when a Mentor is blocked locally or globally they don’t continue to receive questions from mentees (T325087, T318819).
• Add a Link
  • Newcomers at Growth pilot wikis will now receive “add a link” suggestions for articles that are more clearly "underlinked" (T301096). After discussing this change with Pilot communities and looking at “add a link” metrics we will decide if this change should be released to more wikis.