Maria Heuschkel (WMDE)

Das Archiv der Benutzerindiskussionsseite findet sich hier.

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Hallo Maria.

Herzlich Willkommen in der Wikipedia und viel Spaß bei deiner neuen Arbeit!

Liebe Grüße, --Holder (Diskussion) 18:05, 22. Nov. 2016 (CET)

Weihnachtsgrüsse

Datei:Stamps of Germany (Berlin) 1974, MiNr 481.jpg

Weihnachtsgruss

Das Team Ideenförderung ist für mich das Wichtigste, was WMDE für uns Autoren und Fotografen leistet. Deshalb möchte ich allen Mitarbeitern für die Arbeit im vergangenen Jahr danken. Ich weiss, das ihr oft an eurer Leistungsgrenze arbeitet. Fühlt euch also ganz heftig geknuddelt aus dem fast wikipediafreien Norden. Gruss --Nightflyer (Diskussion) 23:35, 22. Dez. 2016 (CET)

Vielen Dank dir und ebenso weihnachtliche Grüße an dich! --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 09:19, 23. Dez. 2016 (CET)

Wikipedia:Europäisches Kulturerbejahr 2018/Wikipedia-Kulturbotschafter

Hallo, ich bin mehr zufällig auf die Veranstaltung aufmerksam geworden, schon seit einigen Monaten beschäftige ich mich mit dem UNESCO-Welterbe Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in OSM (derzeit Schwerpunkt) dabei Verknüpfung mit Commons und Wikipedia
Hier beispielsweise die Pagode, die am Sonntag aufgesucht werden soll:

• http://gk.historic.place/historische_objekte/index.html?zoom=18&lat=51.31137&lon=9.41667&pid=HaHbHcSaHe&select=w214802668

s. auch diese Projektseite

• https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Jo_Cassel/Bergpark_Wilhelmshöhe

Interesse, ein derartig Orts- und Themenbezogenes Projekt aus der Praxis dort (kurz) kennenzulernen?

Kann Interessierter unverbindlich vorbeischauen?

fragende Grüße ... Baummapper (Diskussion) 19:08, 4. Sep. 2018 (CEST)

Hallo @Baummapper: danke für deine Nachricht! Wir würden uns sehr freuen, wenn du dich uns zum Beispiel am Sonntag anschließen würdest wenn wir gemeinsam mit der Vorsitzenden des Vereins Bürger für das Welterbe Kassel e. V. das chinesische Dorf im Bergpark erkunden. Die Führung startet gegen 14 Uhr an der Pagode. Wenn für dich weitere Programmpunkte ebenfalls interessant sind, dann bist du auch herzlich eingeladen daran teilzunehmen, lass mich nur wissen wann und wie zur besseren Planung. Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 16:02, 5. Sep. 2018 (CEST)

Ich schaue am Freitag 17:00 einfach mal vor Ort vorbei ... geplant werden muss für mich nichts ... man sieht sich ... Baummapper (Diskussion) 19:28, 5. Sep. 2018 (CEST)

Glückwunsch

Liebe Benutzerin:Maria Heuschkel (WMDE),

du wurdest für die WikiEule 2018 in der Kategorie:SupportEule nominiert. Wir möchten dir sehr herzlich zu deiner Nominierung gratulieren und haben dir ein EulenBabel für deine Babelleiste mitgebracht. Gleichzeitig möchten wir dir für deine Arbeit in der Wikipedia sehr herzlich danken.

Diese Benutzerin wurde für die SupportEule 2018 nominiert.

Beste Grüße, Deine --WikiEulenAcademy  23:16, 7. Okt. 2018 (CEST)

Liebe Maria, Du hast die Nominierung wirklich 1000%ig für Deine Geduld, Freundlichkeit und dein Engagement verdient. Hoffentlich bleibst Du uns noch lange erhalten. Wir brauchen solche netten Leute wie Dich als Ansprechpartner ganz dringend. Geolina ^{mente et malleo} ✎ 11:29, 8. Okt. 2018 (CEST)

Liebe Geolina, vielen lieben Dank für deine lieben Worte :). Ihr macht es alle aber auch sehr leicht freundlich und nett zu sein! --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 12:07, 8. Okt. 2018 (CEST)

Wo ich gerade zufällig hier bin: Herzeuligen Glpckwunsch! -- southpark 16:58, 8. Okt. 2018 (CEST)

Glückwünsche --Atamari (Diskussion) 22:03, 10. Okt. 2018 (CEST)

Wikipedia:CivilServant - Studie zur Wikipedia

Hallo Maria, über einen Banner bin ich auf Eure Umfrageseite Wikipedia:CivilServant_-_Studie_zur_Wikipedia gestoßen am 15.6.19 und habe auch an der Umfrage teilgenommen.

Scheinbar ist etwas "verschüttet" gegangen und nicht angekommen, denn die darin angekündigte Email mit der weiteren Aufgabe habe ich nie erhalten :-( Da Eure Umfrageseite noch Online ist, habe ich nochmals mitgemacht, alle Fragen beantwortet und abgeschickt..

Dazu habe ich mein Smartphone Honor 6A von Huawei mit Android 7.0 und Browser Chrome verwendet.

Eine Fehlermeldung o.ä. habe ich nicht erhalten!! Deshalb bitte ich um Überprüfung.

Ich bin seit 16.11.2008 angemeldet und ein kleiner Teil der großen Wikipedia :-)

Viele Grüße aus Rüsselsheim am Main, --Gustav moenus (Diskussion) 22:09, 13. Jul. 2019 (CEST)

@Gustav moenus: Entschuldige vielmals die späte Rückmeldung! Irgendwie ist dein Beitrag bei mir untergegangen (ich müsste mal meine Disk aufräumen...) - die Studie hat letzte Woche so richtig begonnen und du solltest eine Mail dazu bekommen haben. Wenn das nicht passiert ist, sag mir doch bitte nochmal Bescheid! Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 11:39, 13. Aug. 2019 (CEST)

Folien aus dem Hangout

Hallo Maria, ihr wolltet uns doch die Folien von der Konferenz zukommen lassen. Habt ihr mich vielleicht nicht im Verteiler, ich habe noch nichts bekommen. --Keks Ping mich an! um 16:06, 9. Aug. 2019 (CEST)

Übrigens: das Haus der Jugend in Frankfurt direkt am Mainufer in der Nähe der Museen hat gesagt, dass grundsätzlich frei wäre, ih kläre gerade stammtischintern Termine für eine Besichtigung ab, dann gucken wir uns das mal vor Ort an! --Keks Ping mich an! um 21:44, 9. Aug. 2019 (CEST)

@Der Keks:: Danke für die Nachfrage! Wir haben dich nicht vergessen, sondern wollten noch den 2. Vorbereitungscall am letzten Donnerstag abwarten um die Infos der anderen teilnehmenden Gruppen auch mit in die Dokumentation aufnehmen zu können. Jetzt bin ich leider krank geworden, d.h. es könnte sich tatsächlich noch ein wenig verzögern. Das mit dem Haus der Jugend klingt doch super! Von den von mir angeschriebenen Museen am Museumsufer hat bisher nur das Architekturmuseum geantwortet (Absage). Ich melde mich bei dir sobald es Neues gibt. Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 11:29, 13. Aug. 2019 (CEST)

Okay, danke für die Rückmeldung, erhol dich gut. Nächsten Samstag schauen wir uns das Haus der Jugend mal an. Gruß und gute Besserung --Keks Ping mich an! um 11:34, 13. Aug. 2019 (CEST)

Hallo, ich weiß, du arbeitest die Mails der Reihe nach ab, aber kannst du mir vielleicht kurz Rückmeldung über die Raumgröße der beiden Räume geben? Hab dir heute morgen geschrieben und Angst, dass die Räume dann wieder weg sind O_o Gruß --Keks Ping mich an! um 13:40, 5. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

Hi Keks, die Mail ist gerade raus, aber gerne auch nochmal hier: Beim Angebot handelt es sich um Raum 102 und Raum 104. Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 16:23, 5. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

Wärst du eventuell daran interessiert, an einer fünfminütigen Forschungsumfrage teilzunehmen, mit deren Hilfe Wikipedia in Zukunft möglicherweise verbessert werden könnte?

Hallo, Maria Heuschkel (WMDE)!

Wärst du eventuell daran interessiert, an einer fünfminütigen Forschungsumfrage teilzunehmen, mit deren Hilfe Wikipedia in Zukunft möglicherweise verbessert werden könnte?

Die gemeinnützige Forschungsorganisation CivilServant arbeitet derzeit mit einem Forschungsteam an der Princeton University zusammen, um zu erfahren, wie die deutschsprachige Wikipedia zu einer besseren Plattform für ihre Autorinnen und Autoren werden könnte. Da du bereits in der Vergangenheit zu Wikipedia beigetragen hast, dachten wir, du könntest an diesem Projekt interessiert sein.

Möchtest du an dieser Studie teilnehmen? Du müsstest lediglich eine fünfminütige Umfrage ausfüllen, in der dir einige Fragen zu deinen Erfahrungen auf Wikipedia gestellt werden.

Wenn es auch in deinem Interesse ist, dass die deutschsprachige Wikipedia weiterhin gedeiht, hoffen wir auf deine Teilnahme. Am Ende dieser Studie würden wir dich darüber informieren, welche neuen Erkenntnisse wir mit deiner Unterstützung gewonnen haben.

Klicke hier, um mehr zu erfahren und die Umfrage zu starten

Vielen Dank! Wir hoffen auf deine Teilnahme.

Falls du irgendwelche Fragen zur Studie hast, kannst du gerne Benutzer:Juliakamin(cs) anschreiben – oder auch Benutzerin:Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) oder Benutzerin:Christine Domgörgen (WMDE), wenn du kein Englisch sprichst und möchtest, dass deine Nachricht an sie übersetzt wird.

CivilServantBot (Diskussion) 23:35, 11. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

CivilServant Umfrage

Hallo Maria Heuschkel,

vielen Dank für eure Umfrage.

Obwohl ich erst seit Mai für Wikipedia schreibe, möchte ich das zum Anlass nehmen, kurz meine wichtigsten Erfahrungen zu schildern:

Wikipedia ist mit Abstand die wichtigste Enzyklopädie der Welt. Und die deutschsprachige (deutsche?) gehört zu den wichtigsten Sprachversionen. Viele Artikel der großen Sprachversionen sind herausragend und mit guten Schulbüchern oder Vorlesungsskripten einer Universität vergleichbar. Trotzdem hab ich seit etwa 2010 den Eindruck, dass noch deutlich mehr möglich wäre. Anscheinend hat sich seitdem das Wachstum stark verlangsamt. Die genauen Gründe kenne ich nicht.

Die meisten Wikipedia Administratoren achten sehr auf Regeln und Richtlinien, was im Prinzip gut ist, aber manchmal übertreiben sie es. Die meisten meiner Ergänzungen und Änderungen werden akzeptiert, meist ohne Kommentar. Manchmal werden die Änderungen aber vollständig rückgängig gemacht und zwar aus folgenden Gründen: Fehlende Quellenangaben: Das verstehe ich. Unpassender Inhalt oder zu detailliert: Das verstehe ich meistens nicht. In seltenen Fällen haben mir Administratoren Urheberrechtsverletzungen gegen andere Wikipedia-Autoren vorgeworfen. Ich dachte, Wikipedia ist eine freie Enzyklopädie. Ich würde mich eher darüber freuen, dass jemand bei mir abschreibt. Vielleicht verstehe ich die Prinzipien von Wikipedia nicht ganz. Diskussionen darüber halte ich aber für Zeitverschwendung. Es ist bisher nicht vorgekommen, dass ein Administrator einen Teil meiner Änderungen akzeptiert und den Teil, der ihm nicht passt, entfernt hat.

Mir ist aufgefallen, dass die meisten Rückmeldungen auf meiner Diskussionsseite negativ sind. Es ist selten, dass sich jemand positiv äußert oder sogar bedankt. Insofern fand ich die letzte Frage eurer Umfrage sehr gut.

Ich schaue mir seit über 10 Jahren sehr oft die neuen Artikel unter Wikipedia:Exzellente Artikel und Wikipedia:Lesenswerte Artikel an. Seit einigen Jahren ist mir aufgefallen, dass dort sehr gut geschriebene, aber meistens sehr spezielle Artikel ausgezeichnet werden, die selten gelesen werden. Viele davon sind historische Artikel. Das irritiert mich, weil Wikipedia eine digitale Enzyklopädie ist. Die letzten relevanten Artikel, die dort ausgezeichnet wurden, sind Volleyball, Pferde und Beryllium.

Ich habe das zum Anlass genommen, mich beim wichtigsten Autor von Beryllium zu bedanken, weil dieses Thema in meinen Bereich fällt.

Bei meinen Änderungen achte ich nicht nur darauf, dass ich mich mit dem Thema genug auskenne, sondern auch, dass ich nur hinreichend wichtige Artikel ändere. Dabei hilft mir die Abrufstatistik:

https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=de.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=latest-20&pages=Wikipedia:Exzellente_Artikel

Ich habe schon öfter die Spendenaufrufe gesehen. Bisher habe ich Wikipedia keinen Zaster gespendet. Ich glaube, das ist nicht das Hauptproblem. Und es gibt wichtigere Hilfsorganisationen.

Ich glaube es macht Sinn, die Autoren zu motivieren, sich auf die wichtigen Artikel zu konzentrieren. Die Wikipedia-Leser sind wichtiger als die Wikipedia-Schreiber.

Obwohl du für CivilServant arbeitest, würde ich mir wünschen, dass auch du als Wikipedia-Autorin dabei hilfst, wichtige Artikel zu verbessern. Es gibt sicher Themen, die für dich infrage kommen.

Darf ich fragen:

Was sind die Gründe für diese Umfrage? Welche Artikel willst du verbessern? Welche Verbesserungsvorschläge für Wikipedia hast du?

Viele Grüße --Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 19:11, 25. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

Hallo @Maximum 2520: Vielen lieben Dank für deine Nachricht und die Schilderung deiner Erfahrungen mit deinem Einstieg in die Wikipedia. Nur ganz schnell eine kleine Klarstellung: Ich "arbeite" nicht für CivilServant - meine Kollegin Christine und ich arbeiten nur mit CivilServant zusammen. CivilServant führt verschiedene Forschungsstudien mit der französisch-, arabisch-, persisch- und polnischsprachigen Wikipedia durch und hilft den Communities verschiedene Fragestellungen zur Zusammenarbeit in Wikipedia oder zum Einstieg von Neuen in die Projekte zu beantworten. Christine und ich sind beim Verein Wikimedia Deutschland angestellt, CivilServant ist eine unabhängige gemeinnützige Organisation. Die Umfrage ist Teil einer Studie, die erforschen soll wie die Wikipedia verbessert werden könnte. Die Ergebnisse werden zum Abschluss der Studie natürlich veröffentlicht. Ich hoffe die Antwort konnte weiterhelfen :). Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 17:02, 26. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

Hallo @Maria Heuschkel: Heißt das, es geht euch vor allem um Forschung und nicht darum, selbst Wikipedia-Artikel zu verbessern, oder? Das fände ich ein bisschen schade. Trotzdem danke. Und viel Erfolg!

--Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 20:15, 26. Sep. 2019 (CEST)

Hallo Maria Heuschkel,

am heutigen Arbeitstag und offiziellen Feiertag will ich mich mal wieder melden.

Anscheinend läuft im Hintergrund einiges. Soll es eine neue Mitgliederplattform geben?

Kannst du mir erklären, wann wir eine Rückmeldung über die Ergebnisse der CivilServant Umfrage bekommen? Liegt ihr im Zeitplan? Dann müsste es etwa in einem Monat eine Rückmeldung geben. Oder habt ihr euch zwischendurch wirklich ehrgeizige Ziele gesetzt? Grüße--Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 09:07, 1. Mai 2020 (CEST)

Hallo @Maximum 2520: - der Plan ist weiterhin, dass die Ergebnisse in Form eines Blogposts Ende Mai, bzw. Anfang Juni veröffentlicht werden sollen. Diejenigen, die an der Studie teilgenommen haben, sollten in dem Zeitraum dann auch eine Abschlussnachricht bekommen, in der die Ergebnisse verlinkt sein werden. Die "wissenschaftliche" Veröffentlichung der Ergebnisse (also dann auch in entsprechenden Fachzeitschriften) nimmt mehr Zeit in Anspruch, dazu kann ich noch keine klaren Aussagen. Ich hoffe das beantwortet deine Frage? Von einer neuen Mitgliederplattform weiß ich nichts, meinst du den Wikimedia Space, den die Wikimedia Foundation vor einiger Zeit eingeführt hat? Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 15:49, 5. Mai 2020 (CEST)

Danke für die Antwort. Nein, ich meinte eigentlich die Newcomer taks, aber vielleicht hab ich das auch falsch verstanden und es ist nur eine Erweiterung schon vorhandener Funktionen.--Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 20:26, 5. Mai 2020 (CEST)

Ah, könnte ein spannendes Instrument sein, wird im Moment aber nur in der Arabischen, Vietnamesischen, Koreanischen und Tschechischen Wikipedia verwendet. Die Entscheidung ob solche Instrumente von Neulinge in den Wikipedien eingesetzt und getestet werden, ist aber einer der jeweiligen Community. --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 12:48, 7. Mai 2020 (CEST)

Growth team updates #10

Welcome to the tenth 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.

General news

• Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
• You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!

Growth at Wikimania

Opening panel in the Community Growth space

• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
• Here are the most important links:
  • Notes and learnings from Wikimania
  • Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
  • Slides from Growth team presentation
• These are some of our topline notes:
  • Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
  • Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
  • Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!

Mockup of newcomer tasks

• The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
• We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
• These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
  • Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
  • How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
  • How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
• We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
• You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?

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

20:49, 2. Okt. 2019 (CEST)

CivilServant Umfrage

Hallo Maria Heuschkel,

eine kurze Frage zu eurer Umfrage: Wann in etwa ist damit zu rechnen, dass die Ergebnisse der Studie veröffentlicht werden? Wie erfahren die Teilnehmer der Umfrage davon? Für eine Antwort wär ich dankbar.

Deutsche und europäische Grüße zur Einheitsfeier--Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 20:16, 3. Okt. 2019 (CEST)

Hallo Maximum! Danke für deine Nachfrage - Geplantes Ende der Studie war Dezember 2019, nach aktuellem Stand wird es aber wahrscheinlich eher bis Frühjahr 2020 dauern bis die Ergebnisse veröffentlicht werden können. Auf die veröffentlichten Ergebnisse werden wir in verschiedenen Kanälen aufmerksam machen (z.B. auch Kurier). Diejenigen, die an der Umfrage teilgenommen haben, bekommen allerdings auch eine direkte Nachricht, wenn die Ergebnisse veröffentlicht werden. Liebe Grüße, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 18:07, 9. Okt. 2019 (CEST)

Danke, dann bin ich gespannt auf die Ergebnisse. Viele Grüße--Maximum 2520 (Diskussion) 21:48, 12. Okt. 2019 (CEST)

Die CivilServant Research-Auszeichnung

Hallo Maria Heuschkel (WMDE),

im Juni hast du freiwillig an einer mehrteiligen Studie teilgenommen, die helfen soll zu verstehen, wie die Erfahrungen von Autorinnen und Autoren in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia verbessert werden könnten. Diese Auszeichnung wird dir verliehen, weil du das Projekt abgeschlossen hast - und für deinen Einsatz, um die deutschsprachige Wikipedia besser zu machen! Vielen Dank vom Team von CivilServant - Maximilianklein(CS), User:Juliakamin(cs), und User:CS natematias.

		Die CivilServant Research-Auszeichnung
		Für das Beitragen zu Forschung, die Wikipedianerinnen und Wikipedianern wertvolle Informationen dazu gibt, wie ihre Communites wachsen und gestärkt werden können.
		Juliakamin(cs) (Diskussion) 00:40, 18. Okt. 2019 (CEST)

Growth team updates #11

Welcome to the eleventh 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.

General news

• Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
• The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!

Help panel results

Mockup of guidance while doing a suggested edit, using the help panel

The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).

• In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
• This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
• We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
• We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.

Newcomer tasks deployment

Mockup of topic matching in newcomer tasks

• The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
• We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
• These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
  • V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
  • V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
• The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.

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

16:02, 18. Nov. 2019 (CET)

Benutzerseite

Huhu, du hast doch per SUL viele Konten auch in anderen Wikis und bindest schon eine Seite von Meta ein. Schau mal, wie ich das gelöst habe: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Der_Keks&action=edit. Je nach Spracheinstellung bekommt der Nutzer einen anderen Text. Da du aktuell zweisprachig schreibst, könntest du switch auch hier auf der dewp verwenden oder gleich auf der metaseite. --Keks Ping mich an! 16:29, 28. Jan. 2020 (CET)

Hi Keks! Coole Sache, hab ich gleich mal für deutsch und englisch eingestellt (hoffe ich zumindest :)). Liebe Grüße aus Berlin, --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 09:32, 3. Feb. 2020 (CET)

Ich wollte noch ein bisschan nachputzen, darf aber auf meta nur meine eigene Seite bearbeiten: Ich habe hier mal einen Verbesserungsvorschlag gemacht. Du hattest noch einen Link auf meine Seite stehen, es hieß "Hello und" und den Zeilenumbruch zwischen "Hallo und" und "Willkommen" hab ich entfernt. Ich habe das m:Template:userpage ({{userpage}}) bei mir eingebunden, weil ich mir vorstellen kann, dass es verwirrend ist, wenn die seite im lokalen wiki gar nicht exisitert sondern von meta geladen wurde. Vielleicht hast du das absichtlich weggelassen, vielleicht auch nur übersehen :) Gruß --Keks Ping mich an! 13:32, 3. Feb. 2020 (CET)

Ich habe netterweise von einem Admin auf meta ohne Nachfrage autopatroller-rechte bekommen :), habe dir das mal geändert auf der Benutzerseite: :m:19801058 --Keks Ping mich an! 09:45, 12. Feb. 2020 (CET)

Danke, Keks :) ! --Maria Heuschkel (WMDE) (Diskussion) 13:57, 14. Feb. 2020 (CET)

Growth team updates #12

Welcome to the twelfth 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.

General news

• A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
• Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks

We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.

Suggested edits by type of edit.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits

• About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
• When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
  • 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
  • 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
• Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
• Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed

The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".

• On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
• In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks

Prototype of how the help panel will "peek" from the bottom of the page to offer guidance on mobile.

Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.

• Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
• Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
• Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

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18:40, 4. Feb. 2020 (CET)

Growth team newsletter #13

Welcome to the thirteenth 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.

Join the conversation: structured tasks

Sketch of an idea for a structured workflow for adding links to an article. The goal is to help newcomers edit at high volume.

We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.

In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.

Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.

In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.

Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.

Expanding to more wikis

We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.

In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.

We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.

Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!

Other updates

39 topics are now available for newcomer tasks

Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.

• In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
• In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test. See the full results here.
• We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
• Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.

As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!

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16:30, 18. Mai 2020 (CEST)

Mitteilung zu den Ergebnissen der Wikipedia-Studie

Hallo,

die gemeinnützige Forschungsorganisation CivilServant hat gemeinsam mit einem Forschungsteam der Cornell University eine Studie durchgeführt, um herauszufinden, wie Wikipedia-Autorinnen und -Autoren bessere Erfahrungen mit der Plattform machen können. Im Rahmen dieser Studie haben erfahrene Autorinnen und Autoren der deutschen Wikipedia im Zeitraum vom August 2019 bis zum Februar 2020 anderen Autorinnen und Autoren für einen ihrer Beiträge gedankt.

Wir wollten dich wissen lassen, dass du möglicherweise zu den Autorinnen und Autoren gehörst, denen im Verlauf der Studie gedankt wurde. Die Ergebnisse kannst du hier nachlesen. Falls dir tatsächlich gedankt wurde, hat sich ein erfahrener Autor also gedacht, dass dein Beitrag wertvoll war und ein Dankeschön verdient hat.

Du kannst die ersten Ergebnisse dieser Studie online nachlesen: https://citizensandtech.org/tausende-von-menschen-haben-fur-ihre-arbeit-an-wikipedia-dank-erhalten-was-wir-daraus-gelernt-haben/.

Im Rahmen der Studie haben wir öffentlich zugängliche Informationen auf Wikipedia zusammengetragen. Wenn du deine Daten von dieser Studie entfernen lassen möchtest, kannst du dich gerne an Meta:user:Juliakamin(cs) wenden.

Diese Studie wird von J. Nathan Matias durchgeführt, einem Dozenten an der Cornell University. Wenn du Fragen hast, kannst du dich jederzeit an ihn oder an die Forschungsleiterin der Studie, Julia Kamin, wenden. Du erreichst sie unter nathan.matias@civilservant.io respektive julia.kamin@civilservant.io.

Nathan ist zudem der Gründer von CivilServant – die Organisation verwaltet die Software, die bei dieser Studie eingesetzt wird. Fragen zu dieser Beziehung kannst du gerne an Nathan persönlich richten. Solltest du irgendwelche Fragen oder Bedenken haben, was deine Rechte als Studienteilnehmer angeht, kannst du das Institutional Review Board (kurz: IRB) für menschliche Teilnehmer der Cornell University kontaktieren. Du erreichst es unter der Telefonnummer +1-607-255-5138 oder unter folgender Website: http://www.irb.cornell.edu. Die Cornell University ist eine Universität in den Vereinigten Staaten, die wir um die Betreuung unserer Forschung gebeten haben. Wir wollen auf diese Weise sicherstellen, dass unsere Studie den forschungsethischen Anforderungen entspricht. Eventuelle Sorgen oder Klagen kannst du unter der Telefonnummer +1-866-293-3077 oder anonym über EthicsPoint auf der Website www.hotline.cornell.edu äußern. EthicsPoint ist eine unabhängige Organisation, die als Mittler zwischen der Universität und der klagenden Person fungiert, damit die Anonymität letzterer gewahrt werden kann.

Zu guter Letzt hast du im Zusammenhang mit der Studie vielleicht auch an einer Umfrage teilgenommen. Falls ja, wurden dir deine Rechte in Bezug auf deine Daten damals mitgeteilt. Wenn du Fragen hast, kannst du Julia unter julia.kamin@civilservant.io kontaktieren. Die Umfrageergebnisse waren nicht aussagekräftig und werden daher nicht bekannt gegeben.

Herzlichen Dank! CivilServantBot (Diskussion) 06:42, 9. Jun. 2020 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter 14

Welcome to the fourteenth 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.

Success with guidance

The star on this image is the week we deployed "guidance".

We deployed the "Guidance" feature on June 15.

This feature uses the help panel to explain what to do after selecting a suggested edit. For instance, if a newcomer selects a copyedit task, they are guided on what sorts of errors to look for. They can see examples of how to rewrite the text. You can try this feature on test.wikipedia.org. First enable the homepage and the help panel in your preferences there.

Since we launched "Guidance", the data we collected show good results (see image). Now, we see more users completing suggested edits than before Guidance was deployed.

Structured tasks

Design concept for the "add a link" structured task

Structured tasks is a project that aims to break down editing workflows into a series of steps. We hope newcomers can accomplish these tasks easily.

In the previous newsletter, we asked for feedback from community members on the idea. We had a good discussion in six languages with 35 community members (summary here). We have now posted new design mockups. We hope community members can check the mockups out and react to them (in any language). They are posted along with some of the main questions we are thinking about as we continue to refine our plans.

Other technical updates

Mockup of Variant D of the homepage on desktop.

• We are currently working on Variants C and D (adjacent image) of the homepage. The goal is to increase the number of newcomers who start the newcomer tasks workflow. This is the team's main project at the moment.
• We've made it easier to hide the help panel when not needed. [1]
• The welcome survey has a new question for people who created their account: language skills. The goal is to find out how many newcomers know multiple languages, so that we can learn whether it is a good idea to integrate Content Translation as a newcomer task. To make room for this question, we removed one that is not being used. [2]

Community outreach

• We continue to engage with more communities. We recently deployed the Growth features to Persian, Hebrew, and Russian Wikipedias. Learn more about getting the features.
• If your community is having a remote event, and you are interested in hearing from the Growth team, please contact us! We have already participated to two community events online:
  • The Polish Wikiconference (recording on Google Drive)
  • The Celtic Knot 2020 (video available on Youtube).

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

11:33, 7. Sep. 2020 (CEST)

Growth team updates #15

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

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

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

• We recently deployed the Growth features to Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish Wikipedias. 18 wikis now have Growth features. Learn more about getting the features.
• Have you recently checked if all interface messages are translated for your language?

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11:10, 1. Nov. 2020 (CET)

Growth team updates #16

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

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

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

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

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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15:22, 7. Dez. 2020 (CET)

Growth team newsletter #17

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

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

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

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

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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17:03, 3. Mär. 2021 (CET)

Growth Newsletter #18

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

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

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

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

• Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Rumänischsprachige Wikipedia, Dänischsprachige Wikipedia, Thailändischsprachige Wikipedia, Indonesische Wikipedia, Kroatische Wikipedia, Albanischsprachige Wikipedia, Esperantosprachige Wikipedia, Hindisprachige Wikipedia, Norwegischsprachige (Bokmål) Wikipedia, Japanischsprachige Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanischsprachige Wikipedia, Wikipedia in einfachem Englisch, Malaiischsprachige Wikipedia, Tamilische Wikipedia, Griechischsprachige Wikipedia, Katalanischsprachige 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.

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17:23, 17. Mai 2021 (CEST)

Growth Newsletter #19

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

"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

• 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. [3]
• 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 [4]

Community configuration

• 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

• 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. [5]
• 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. [6][7]
• 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

• 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.

20:36, 26. Okt. 2021 (CEST)

Growth Newsletter #20

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

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

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

• 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

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

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.

18:12, 16. Mär. 2022 (CET)

Growth team newsletter #21

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

New project: Positive reinforcement

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

• We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
  • In the Mentor module, we now provide more information about the public nature of the mentors/newcomer relationship and the fact that talk pages are public.
  • We now allow newcomers to opt-in and opt-out of mentorship.

Scaling

• "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. [8]

Suggested edits

• 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. [9]
• 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

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. [10]
• Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [11]

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15:03, 5. Jul. 2022 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #22

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

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

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

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

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

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. [12][13]

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: Deine Neulinge mit Sternchen, Deine Neulinge ohne Sternchen.

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. [14]
• Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [15]
• Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [16]

Recent changes and fixed bugs

• We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [17]
• Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Griechischsprachige Wikipedia, Polnischsprachige Wikipedia, Chinesischsprachige Wikipedia, Indonesische Wikipedia, Rumänischsprachige Wikipedia. [18]
• 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. [19]
• In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [20]

Have a question? A suggestion?

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

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19:19, 21. Sep. 2022 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #23

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

Highlights

• Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
• Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.

Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test

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

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. [21]

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

• 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. [22]
• 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. [23][24]
• 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

• 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. [25]

Deployments

• Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [26]

Improving this newsletter

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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21:58, 29. Nov. 2022 (CET)

Growth team newsletter #24

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

Newcomer experience projects

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:

• Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
• Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
• "Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
• Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.

Newcomer tasks

• 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. [27]
• 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. [28]

Mentorship

• When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [29]
• 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. [30]
• Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
  • Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
  • If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news

• In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [31]
• This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations

• 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.

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15:44, 31. Jan. 2023 (CET)

Growth team newsletter #25

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

Celebrations

Leveling up release

• We released Leveling up features to our pilot wikis on March 22 for an initial A/B test.
• In this test, we use post-edit dialogs (pop-ups shown after publishing an edit) and notifications to encourage new editors to try new types of newcomer-friendly suggested edits.
• We are closely monitoring the short term impact of this feature as well as the longer term effect on newcomer productivity and retention. If the experiment shows positive results, we will release this feature to more wikis.

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

• 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. [32][33]
  • 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. [34]
• 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

• Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
  • We are starting design work. [35]
  • Growth team Ambassadors helped with an initial evaluation of these section-level image suggestions. [36]
  • We will start a community consultation in which we share initial ideas and designs soon. [37]
• IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – We will support this project for all Growth Team maintained products and extensions that may be affected by IP Masking. [38]

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15:10, 1. Apr. 2023 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #26

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

One million Suggested Edits

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

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. [39]
• 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

• We are creating a new section-level variation of the “add an image” task. We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway. [40]

Other updates

• We are progressively releasing Add a link to more wikis. [41]
• After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated Thanks usage on the wikis. There is no evidence that thanks increased after the feature was added on more pages.
• We helped with code review for the 2023 Community Wish to add Notifications for user page edits. [42]
• We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our Growth’s Community events report.

What's next for Growth?

• 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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17:14, 29. Mai 2023 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #27

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

Annual plan for Growth

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

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. [43]

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

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. [44]

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

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

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. [45]

Community Configuration 2.0

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. [46]
• We have started to investigate design improvements. [47]
• We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [48]

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14:42, 1. Aug. 2023 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #28

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

• 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

• 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

• We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
• We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
• Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.

Scaling Growth features

• 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

• 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) Diskussion 01:16, 17. Okt. 2023 (CEST)

Growth team newsletter #29

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

Community Conversations

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

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. [49]

Add a Link

We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [50] [51]

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

• We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [52] 🖂
• Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
• A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
• Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.

Mentorship

When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [53]

We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [54]

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. [55]

It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [56]

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19:04, 1. Dez. 2023 (CET)

Growth News, April 2024

The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.

If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Community Configuration

Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.

An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.

In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.

Experiment Results

Add a Image experiment analysis results

The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:

• The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
• The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
• The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
• A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).

Personalized praise experiment results

This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)

English donors encouraged to try editing

As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)

Future work

Annual Plan

The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

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

20:55, 23. Apr. 2024 (CEST)

Growth News, July 2024

Community Configuration

The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.

This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.

You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.

If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!

Current work

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

Future work

Increase constructive activation on mobile

As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.

Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.

Stay informed

Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

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

17:08, 30. Jul. 2024 (CEST)

Growth News, October 2024

Current work

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.

One design concept aimed to increase constructive activation

Constructive activation experimentation

After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.

Community Configuration

This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:

• The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
• Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)

Future work

As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.

Community events

• Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
• Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.

Stay informed

Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

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

Trizek_(WMF), 17:44, 22. Okt. 2024 (CEST)