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Path slopu

Joined 29 December 2017
Latest comment: 6 months ago by Trizek (WMF) in topic Growth team newsletter #28
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Growth team updates #15 edit

Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Variants C and D deployed edit

 
Variant D in Portuguese Wikipedia

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.

Structured tasks: add a link edit

 
Concept A for add a link.

As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.

Learn more about the findings.

Community news edit

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10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Wikimedia Technical Operations/ICU announcement edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page Wikimedia Technical Operations/ICU announcement is available for translation. You can translate it here:

ഈ താളിന്റെ മുൻഗണന ഇടത്തരം ആണ്. ഈ താൾ പരിഭാഷപ്പെടുത്തുന്നതിനുള്ള അവസാന തീയതി 2020-11-12 ആണ്.

An update will happen on the servers hosting the wikis. It will temporary affect how categories are sorting their contents. We plan to send a message to the wikis on 2020-11-13.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

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Thank you!

MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 10:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16 edit

Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Growth features show impact edit

Newcomer task experiments results

The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.

In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.

This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:

  • the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
  • the probability that they are retained as editors
  • the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.

  •  
    The number of suggested edits completed by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020, with a line for the total.
  •  
    The number of distinct users completing suggested edits by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020.

Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.

You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page

General metrics

As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:

  • more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
  • more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
  • more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D edit

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.

News for mentors edit

Mentors are volunteers ready to help newcomers in their first steps. Newcomers can contact them using the mentorship module on their homepage.

A separate list for workshops hosts

During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.

Claiming multiple mentees at once

Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news edit

The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714


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14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Help:Cite edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page Help:Cite is available for translation. You can translate it here:



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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 07:01, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17 edit

 

Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks edit

Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.

Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features edit

Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.

We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.

We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.

Variant testing edit

As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.

News for mentors edit

Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.

Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.

Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.

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16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.36 edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.36 is available for translation. You can translate it here:



Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 22:26, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #18 edit

 

Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks edit

 
A screenshot of "add a link" feature in development in beta.

"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.

News for mentors edit

 
Mockup of the Mentor dashboard.
  • We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
  • We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.

Community configuration edit

 
Community configuration editing form under development

We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.

Scaling edit

  • Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
  • A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
  • After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19 edit

 

Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks edit

 
"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article
  • "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
  • "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors edit

  • The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [1]
  • At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [2]

Community configuration edit

  • Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling edit

  • We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [3]
  • The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [4][5]
  • A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
  • Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.

News for communities edit

  • Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
  • The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
  • Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
  • Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.37 edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.37 is available for translation. You can translate it here:



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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 23:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #20 edit

 

Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits edit

As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement edit

Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

  • Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
  • Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
  • Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!

News for mentors edit

  • The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
  • The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
  • We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
  • Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
  • We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!

Scaling edit

Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help edit

Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.

Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.38 edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MediaWiki 1.38 is available for translation. You can translate it here:



Your help is greatly appreciated. Translators like you help MediaWiki to function as a truly multilingual community.

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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 02:36, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #21 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!

New project: Positive reinforcement edit

 
Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.
  • The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
  • We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
  • We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
  • The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
  • Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.

For mentors edit

Scaling edit

  • "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
  • "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [6]

Suggested edits edit

  • Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
  • Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
    • Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
    • User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
    • Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
    • Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [7]
  • Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.

Community configuration edit

Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.

  • Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [8]
  • Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [9]

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #22 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available edit

As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.

  • About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
  • Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.

If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.

Ongoing projects and explorations edit

 
The new impact module is part of the Positive Reinforcement project. The image displays the mockup for mobile we used for user testing.

We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.

Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).

Experiments analysis edit

Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:

  • Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
  • They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
  • The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).

Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.

  • Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
  • Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.

News for mentors edit

A new system for the mentors list

The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.

The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [10][11]

Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.

Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.

A tip for mentors

Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.

And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.

Other improvements

Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:

  • While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [12]
  • Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [13]
  • Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [14]

Recent changes and fixed bugs edit

  • We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [15]
  • Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [16]
  • Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [17]
  • In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [18]

Have a question? A suggestion? edit

Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.

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17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MediaWiki 1.39 edit

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Growth team newsletter #23 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!

Highlights edit

 
Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test edit

The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.

Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.

This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.

Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback edit

After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:

  • Patroller fatigue:
    • By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
  • Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
    • Add a Link
      • Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
      • The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
      • The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
    • Add an Image
      • Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
      • Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
      • We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [19]

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.

Recent changes edit

  • All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [20]
  • The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [21][22]
  • Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors edit

  • All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
    • We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
    • Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
    • Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
    • A new special page — Special:ManageMentors — now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
  • The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [23]

Deployments edit

Improving this newsletter edit

We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

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20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #24 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomer experience projects edit

The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:

Newcomer tasks edit

  • Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [25]
  • The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [26]

Mentorship edit

  • When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [27]
  • Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [28]
  • Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?

Other news edit

  • In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [29]
  • This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations edit

  • Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
  • Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations

14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #25 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Celebrations edit

Leveling up release

5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February

  • In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
  • Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.

Recent changes edit

  • Add a link
    • Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [30][31]
    • We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
  • The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [32]
  • Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
  • Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work edit

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13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #26 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

One million Suggested Edits edit

We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!

  • The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
  • Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
  • Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
  • Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)

Positive reinforcement edit

Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.

  • The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [37]
  • The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
  • The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image edit

Other updates edit

What's next for Growth? edit

  • We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!

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15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Content translation/Machine Translation/MinT edit

Hello Path slopu,

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This page is ready for translation. Please help translate to make it available especially in the languages listed below:

- Swahili - Dutch - Arabic -Spanish - French - Kashmiri - Santali - Tumbuka - Fulah/Nigerian Fulfulde - Kabyle - Balinese - Banjar - South Azerbaijani - Pangasinan - Tibetan - Crimean Tatar -Lombard - Silesian - Venetian - Ligurian - Waray - Limburgish - Faroese - Shan - Friulian - Acehnese - Sicilian - Buginese - Tok Pisin - Fijian - Dinka - Rundi - Kabiyè - Latgalian - Dzongkha - Kikuyu - Sango - Awadhi - Moroccan Arabic

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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 23:55, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #27 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Annual plan for Growth edit

We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.

Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:

  • Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
  • Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.

Suggested edits edit

 
The new "Add an image" section-level task

We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.

Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [41]

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.

Mentorship edit

The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.

More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [42]

The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.

Positive reinforcement edit

We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.

In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.

Growth contributes to IP Editing migration edit

The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:

  • the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
  • change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [43]

Community Configuration 2.0 edit

We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:

  • We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [44]
  • We have started to investigate design improvements. [45]
  • We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [46]

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12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: MinT edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page MinT is available for translation. You can translate it here:



Greetings!

Please help me translate this page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MinT

The direct translation link: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-MinT&action=page&filter=&language=en

The "Status Update" section of the page will be updated monthly; I would appreciate it if you can update the translation for this section monthly.

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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 04:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #28 edit

Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 

Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

 
Community Configuration, concept A: Accordion style
 
Community Configuration, concept B: Dashboard style

Community configuration 2.0 edit

  • Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
  • Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
  • Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.

IP Masking edit

  • The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
  • Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)

Mentorship edit

Scaling Growth features edit

  • We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
  • We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
  • At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.

Other news edit

  • We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
  • You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
  • After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.

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Trizek_(WMF) Discussion 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

പരിഭാഷാ അറിയിപ്പ്: Wiki-Highlights edit

Hello Path slopu,

You are receiving this notification because you signed up as a translator to മലയാളം ഒപ്പം ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് on MediaWiki. The page Wiki-Highlights is available for translation. You can translate it here:



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MediaWiki translation coordinators‎, 22:57, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #29 edit

 

Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community Conversations edit

The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.

This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.

Impact Module edit

At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [47]

Add a Link edit

We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [48] [49]

We have a few Wikipedias remaining:

  • German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
  • There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.

Community Configuration edit

Mentorship edit

When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [51]

We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [52]

We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [53]

It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [54]

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18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

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