Topic on Talk:Growth/2023

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T290441

Today I learned about the work of your team, and seeing only the mock-ups, I think it's the way to go.

That been said, I write to you to ask you to consider Wikisource. I think the tools you have developed are suited for us, and here's my reasons:

1) we are mainly small communities with dire need for growth 2) our work is very fun, you get to read a lot about that you like, and there is room for everyone. (There's always more and more texts, and no subject is "taken") 3) we have a huuuge backlog, lots of stuff that need maintenance 4) our workflow has a very steeped learning curve, which usually deter newcomers. Once you get the basics, it's as easy as reading a book.

Let me know what you think about this. If there's any chance, some of the community's members are really tech-savvy and surely will be happy to work with you.

Hello Ignacio, and thank you for your message !

As written on the get-the-features page, we keep the door open to any community wishing to deploy the feature at their wiki. For non-Wikipedia wikis, they get the features as they are, and the team will not have time to prioritize improvements specific to those wikis. However, it doesn't mean that it is impossible for you to get the features, nor get improvements being made. :)

I don't know if you already tried the features, for instance at Spanish Wikipedia. I think they could fit Wikisources as they are:

• the Homepage is the key feature. There, we can eaisly deploy the following modules:
  • the mentorship module would be very helpful for any newcomer. You get an experienced user assigned to you when you create your account, so that you can get some advice when it is time to edit.
  • Suggested edits are a bit more tricky to change, but maybe some of the existing maintenance tasks could be used on Wikisource. Or you could "hack" some of these tasks, by over-writing all messages locally. The feature offers 2 placeholders for easy tasks, 2 for medium tasks and 1 for hard ones. We need to figure out how to triage them by topic.
  • Other modules available at the homepage would remain unchanged.

• the Help panel can be customized with helpful links so that newcomers can have them on hand. We can also add either a link to the mentor talk page, or to the local help desk.

I'd say it is something we should try! I will share your idea with the rest of the team, to check about this possibility. The most important point then would be to find a Wikisource to volunteer. Any thoughts? ;)

I'm an admin at Spanish Wikisource. Tomorrow after my shift ends I will look into those pages and see what I can do.

If I need help with the setup, can I contact you by email?

We will have to work together in order to check if the deployment is possible and how to customize it.

Keep me posted at: bevellin@wikimedia.org :)

Ignacio Rodríguez, I believe the procedure is to open a query at the wiki where it needs to be deployed, and seek community consensus in a vote and discussion. Once that's done then deployment and customization may proceed.

Trizek, MMiller, MFlorence, I would suggest that you put a message out in TechNews for all sister wikis (Wikibooks, Wikisource, et al) and invite them to deploy any of the Growth Team projects there, if you haven't done so already. (It is in my opinion better to do it early as software engineering may be influenced by custom needs of these wikis and their early implementation could perhaps help to improve the software design with little overheads.)

Thanks.

@Gryllida, thank you for your encouragement to see more wiki getting our features!

Our current focus is on Wikipedias. As a consequence, our features aren't designed to work properly at other wikis. French Wiktionary already enabled some of the features, but not all of them, because they aren't relevant: what's the point to add links between definitions, or to work on copyediting?

We have decided to provide a good Growth experience to sister projects instead of just taking the features "as they are", with more limited functionalities. As a consequence, we are not encouraging the deployment of Growth features at sister projects for now. Here is our plan: at the moment, I'm working on collecting information from sister projects, to know the kind of tasks they usually provide to newcomers. This way, we can improve Growth features to for the specific needs of Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc.

It seems that our first group of wikis would be Wikisource, since I received several requests from different groups.

Hello!

A first meeting happen with some users of Wikisouces from India, about adopting Growth features to Wikisource (notes here).

Now, I'm looking for more feedback to have a better overview of the needs of Wikisource.

@Ignacio Rodríguez, do you think it would interest some people from Spanish Wikisource to have a virtual meeting to discuss about welcoming newcomers at Wikisource, and how Growth tools could help?

Thank you!

@Trizek (WMF) Nobody answered at Spanish WS. If you want to have a virtual meeting with me, please email me for coordination.

I'm going to ask the broader community and tell you what they think.

The Ukrainian section of Wikisource is also not against this expansion in Wikisource. In the near future, I will start a discussion on the project. Best regards, admin of the Ukrainian section

Hello

I just created a project page to have everything regarding Growth features and Wikisource at the same place. Please let me know, on this new page's talk page what you think about it.

I will soon schedule a discussion time about Wikisource and Growth.