Growth/Non-editing participation

Group:	Growth
Start:	2023-06-01
Lead:	Product Manager: Kirsten Stoller
Updates:	Most updates posted here.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T339826

This research for this project was included in Growth's 2023-2024 Annual Plan. Throughout the 23/24 fiscal year, the Growth team collaborated with the Design Research team to delve deeper into this concept. You can find the final report on Non-editing Participation here: Non-editing Participation final report.

Summary

Successful editors tend to build their “contribution skills” through iterative, progressive learning in safe spaces where the stakes are lower (New Editor Experiences). The Growth team hypothesizes that if we find ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia in an easy, low-risk way, that some of these readers will eventually funnel into contributing to the Wikimedia movement in more meaningful ways.

The Growth team will utilize Non-editing participation research to guide this project.

Current status

April 2023: WMF Annual planning discussions
June 2023: Initial non-editing participation research planning started (T337969)
July 2023: Initial research completed by YUX
October 2023: Recruitment for reader interviews started (T342353)
March 2024: Non-editing participation final report published

Background

The Growth team is guided by the Annual Plan of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Product & Technology department's Objectives and Key Results. This hypothesis and associated project relates to the Reading and media experience objective.

Reading and media experience objective: Produce a modern, relevant and accessible reading and media experience for our projects.
Key Result 3: Deepen reader engagement with Wikipedia via 0.05% of unique devices engaging in non-editing participation.

This key result focuses on deepening reader engagement, while also exploring ways in which readers can contribute to our projects that are not editing pages. We hypothesize that there are people who are interested in getting involved with the wikis but for whom editing of any kind is too big of a leap. We want those people to have a way to get more deeply involved, perhaps becoming more committed readers, or eventually becoming comfortable enough to edit.

"Non-editing participation" refers to any actions users can take on the wikis besides editing (we are also counting edits to discussions as 'editing'). While our websites don't have any of this, our apps do, in the form of reading lists or sharing content to social media. This work could include letting users configure their own personal reading experience, or could also focus on sharing content across the wiki, curating, and suggesting content to others. The KR is inclusive of work on the mobile and desktop websites and the apps. For mobile and desktop it may include the adoption of some non-editing participation functionality that exists on the apps.

The number 0.05% is approximately the ratio of editors to unique devices -- so perhaps in the first year of this feature set, we see a similar ratio for non-editing participants, which would eventually increase to greater than the number of editors in the future.

Goals

We want to

Explore the needs of the 19% of users who create accounts to “read Wikipedia” [account creation reason].
Create opportunities to participate in the wikis in small "non-editing" ways that feel safe and accessible to new account holders (creating reading lists or sharing section of articles).

We don't want to

Discourage newcomers from editing in traditional ways.
Create more work for patrollers or experienced editors.
Create confusion about Wikipedia's purpose or values.

Research

The Non-Editing Participation research project, conducted on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Growth team, emerged from the WMF’s ongoing exploration of avenues for deepening reader engagement with Wikipedia. The question of what readers want and expect from the Wikipedia reading experience—and what the WMF might provide them—has long been of interest to WMF product teams, given that a significant proportion of new account holders (around 20%) consistently report that they created accounts “to read Wikipedia.” Recently, WMF product teams have been specifically interested in the idea of “non-editing participation”—to what extent can readers be enticed or encouraged to deepen their engagement with Wikipedia through participatory actions that fall short of “traditional” editing?

Non-Editing Participation research took two parts—the first being a background investigation and literature review that examined the various ways that people engage in “participatory” reading off Wikipedia, reviewing specific mechanisms and interviewing users of non-Wikipedia sites. The second part of Non-Editing Participation saw the Wikimedia Foundation reach out to new account holders who had signed up during the first week of December, 2023. These participants responded to a survey, and a subset also participated in in-depth interviews in which they reacted to designs for reading features currently under exploration by the Growth team.

Non-editing Participation final report

The Non-editing Participation final report, in addition to painting a clearer picture of the people who make accounts “to read Wikipedia,” finds that (a) many readers create accounts because they expect that their accounts will provide them with reading tools and features; (b) new account holders as a group are interested in deepening their relationship with Wikipedia, and have taken a step to do so; and (c) interviewed readers are more interested in tools and features that improve their own experience (like creating reading lists) than they are in features that rely on interaction with others (like sharing reading lists). On the whole, many readers want more from the Wikipedia reading experience than they currently get, and these interested readers might be enticed to deepen their relationship with and participation in Wikipedia if provided some of the tools they appear to expect.

Design

Low-fidelity prototyping

For our initial reader research, we developed low-fidelity prototypes showcasing different non-editing participation concepts. The goal was to assess reader interest in features aimed at enriching reader interaction and engagement with the wikis. Our deliberate choice to keep the designs simple and rudimentary ensured that discussions focused on the underlying concept rather than intricate design details or specific features.

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