Topic on Talk:Growth/2023

I knew I had enabled something in the mentor dashboard to allow newcomers to find me, but Special:MentorDashboard did not have any links to "What is mentor dashboard" or "Where to give feedback" or similar. So I had to basically search for this page across different interwikis anyway. So that's a problem.

But even at the project level itself, I feel like it's badly designed.

Anecdotally, if you look at my talk page and the last three archives on enwiki, I have about 10ish editors asking me a "question" through this feature. To them the dashboard is appearing like I have sent a personalised welcome to them, but unlike Twinkle welcome messages or similar, there's no indicator at all to me (or any bystander) what is going on. It just says "Question from X", and includes whatever the users say, which is often them trying to reply to a non-existent message that nobody knows what it is.

Even once you fix that, I think the dashboard has been applied too broadly. All the users I got assigned just made 1 edit (Asking that question), often not even about editing the encyclopedia, and then never checked again. You're wasting volunteer time by directing 1-edit-accounts to experienced users, because a significant percentage of those accounts, probably even as high as 90-95%, will never check Wikipedia again. There needs to be a minimum activity threshold applied of some sort at minimum.

And lastly, I don't believe this project uses good enough metrics to track if the project itself is designed well. For example, in the August 2023 "preliminary analysis" activitation is defined at the absurdly low state of "one edit", while all the other metrics (retention/productivity/revert rate), it showed no effect at all. I think the threshold for revert rate was still extemely low and noisy, since it included everyone with just 1 edit.

All of this to say, I do not think this experience is very much designed keeping in mind the mentors who are supposed to be assisting via here. And it possibly does not even design keeping the mentees themselves in mind. If I were working on this project, I would at least revisit a lot of core assumptions made here.

As for now, I'm definitely disabling this for myself for the foreseeable future.

(I would have posted this in Talk:Growth/Mentor dashboard but that page seems to be dead.)

Hi @Soni, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful and detailed feedback. I truly value the input of experienced users like you, as it plays a crucial role in our ongoing efforts to enhance the Mentorship features provided by the Growth team.

The Mentor Dashboard is a work in progress, and your insights are invaluable in shaping its future. We have several other modules/features in the pipeline, and I see this project as something that we should continue to improve before we can truly measure the success and impact of the feature.

It's interesting that you were receiving so many responses from new editors on your talk page in response to your “Introduction message”.  I know this happens occasionally, but it seems like your introduction message seemed to really spark a response. When you registered as a Mentor (Special:EnrollAsMentor), you added an introduction message. That message then displays to your Mentees on their Newcomer homepage. While it might seem unusual to receive messages like “Awesome! Thank you so much" or "How are you?" from new accounts, it presents an opportunity to swiftly engage with budding editors who are navigating the wikis for the first time. A warm and welcoming response can go a long way in making these new account holders feel connected and confident as they take their first (intimidating) steps on wiki.

That being said, your feedback highlights the importance of onboarding mentors effectively after they sign up. We're actively considering ways to enhance this process  (T318482), and I think adding a clear link to where Mentors can provide feedback about Mentorship or the Mentor Dashboard is something we should take action on right away (T347361), so thanks for highlighting that need.

Regarding your questions about how we define "activation" and our current broad scope, our approach is rooted in our primary team goals:

• encourage more new account holders to try editing (activation)

• encourage new editors to return to edit again (retention)

Our "Add a link" analysis has a glossary that defines these metrics more precisely.

There is a huge funnel of new accounts created on Wikipedia, and Growth's tools primarily focus on guiding those new account holders through those crucial initial stages after creating an account. While programs like Adopt-a-user cater to relatively new, yet committed Wikipedia editors, our emphasis is more on helping newcomers find their initial footing.  Our approach has been guided by various research, including New Editor Experiences, Understanding first day, The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System, and Mentoring in Wikipedia.

Ultimately I think both levels of support are critical to supporting new editors. Effective onboarding and support during the initial stages are vital, but we also acknowledge the value of more personalized mentorship relationships, akin to systems like Adopt-a-user. We're committed to ensuring that Growth's Mentorship tools evolve beyond basic Q & A services and foster meaningful human connections among users with shared interests. Do you have any thoughts on how we could more effectively help connect Mentors and Mentees with shared interests?

We’ll continue to improve and evolve Mentorship and therefore your insights and suggestions are immensely valuable; we'll take them into careful consideration as we continue to refine and expand the Mentor Dashboard. Thank you for your dedication to making Wikipedia a more welcoming and collaborative environment for new editors!  

So my first big takeaway, is that it should be clear to either the newcomers that they're interacting on a Talk page/what the talk page is. Or to everyone else what exactly the message they're replying to is (Ideally both, but I understand that you might have other constraints as well).

Other than that, I think it's super important for any onboarding "mentors" to have a clarity on what exactly they're joining up for. I am relatively experienced but also have less time on hand per week lately. It would help me much more to understand "You may get questions from editors with <5 edits" specifically, because then I can adjust my expectations. Like you said about adoption, not every tool will focus on "Newcomers most likely to stick around long term", but that makes it more important for those tools to be clearer about said goals.

I still think it would be significantly better if there was some minimal editing threshold (even 2-3 edits) before mentees were shown a mentor welcome message, just to guarantee them understand the very basics of "This is wikipedia and you can edit it". I think WP:The Wikipedia Adventure or similar were significantly better for brand new newcomers than this, but again, that's for you guys to figure out. Frankly, my last experience in the mentorship sphere was WP:Co-op on enwiki, which ended up nowhere, so I'm not fully up-to-date on things either. I believe adopt-a-user also currently does not work (Pretty sure the last few talk page requests went unanswered. I cant easily check metrics to tell how many editors are currently in adoption) so there's definitely a few things that could be done better about the entire process.

> Do you have any thoughts on how we could more effectively help connect Mentors and Mentees with shared interests?

Not really, simply because it's a hard problem no matter what granularity you attack it from. I've been in this mentorship sphere in some form for a long while, and projects always struggle from a combination of Not enough mentors/Too many editors who will leave wiki/Too much mentor effort-burnout per mentee. Given that you already want to split mentorship into "Committed" versus "brand new" mentees, it'll be an uphill effort to also attach "Put mentees in touch with people with the same interest" as a condition to search through. I'd personally rather focus on trying to fix the core 3 issues of any one project first before trying to add more things it could also do.

So I'd prefer if mentor dashboard was more focused towards those and also try to keep an eye on existing onwiki resources and tools. I think not using talk pages is a problem because it's not clear to anyone (other than mentees+growth team folk) what exactly newcomers can see. Even with your explanations, I am unsure if (say, on enwiki) resources like Teahouse are linked. I've already expressed why I think there needs to be an enwiki landing page for this tool, even if it's a redirect to this wiki. You don't necessarily need complicated solutions for everything, most experienced editors will happily work with a single detailed page + talk page for all "This is what the project is/this is where to give your thoughts" needs.

I still think it would be significantly better if there was some minimal editing threshold (even 2-3 edits) before mentees were shown a mentor welcome message

As a mentor, many of the questions I get are along the lines “How can I start editing?”, “Can I really edit this article?” etc. An editing threshold would make it impossible for newcomers to ask these questions, and depending on how this threshold works (e.g. whether they get a hint that they need to edit before asking), it could lead to test edits in addition to making newcomers not stay.

Even with your explanations, I am unsure if (say, on enwiki) resources like Teahouse are linked.

You can see en:Special:Homepage yourself, regardless of not being a newcomer (it asks you to enable a preference, if I remember correctly, but that’s it). I see no Teahouse link there.

It's true, we aren't linking to Teahouse from enwiki Homepage currently. Currently these are the main resources that display:

• How to write a good article
• How to edit a page
• How to add an image
• How to edit a citation
• How to create a new article
• View more help articles

However, English admins can customize those links via Special:EditGrowthConfig to whatever they think is most helpful to new editors. One of those links could be swapped out for a Teahouse link if that makes sense.

I'll discuss this feedback further with the Growth team, so thanks again for spending the time to leave it and reply to my questions!