Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features

Initial feedback

Hi Wikimedia Growth Team! Here are my initial thoughts/questions on the proposals:

Newcomer tasks

• For a newcomer-friendly place to find tasks to work on, what we currently already have is the WP:Task Center, with some preferring Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask. The tasks listed at the Task Center need a bunch of updating, but there are a few of us actively working on it. This feature, once fully developed, looks like it'll be a lot better than the current tools, but you might be able to take some inspiration from them.
• I'm not too familiar with ORES models, but it'd be nice if editors, in addition with being presented with a bunch of interests, could also specify their own, so that those really passionate about e.g. railroads can get a feed of railroad articles.
• For the tasks listed in the difficulty filter, one missing easy one is reverting suspected vandalism. You may want to coordinate with the Cluebot folks so that editors can be presented with suspected vandalism and help train Cluebot while reverting.
• The 13% of editors who make more than 5 edits and 9% who come back after 3 days seems a little worryingly low.

Newcomer homepage

• The start module looks good! Encouraging editors to go to the tutorial (probably the recently revamped Help:Introduction on en-WP) is much more important than getting them to create a user page.
• Wow, you have a lot of notices haha!
• How long are you planning for the homepage to be a thing for? Could it transition into something more like the dashboard or community portal as editors become more experienced?
• I'm not sure there are enough active hosts for every new editor to automatically have a mentor. If mentorship ends up being an opt-in feature, what will the page look like for editors without one?
• "view your mentor's other conversations", presumably going to their talk page, seems unnecessary.
• I love the "your impact" module, and I think even experienced editors would love to have it. It reminds me a bit of Local Guides, Google's program for user contributions to Google Maps. That program does an excellent job of sharing statistics on e.g. how many views the photos you've uploaded have had, and it's a big motivator. That program also gamifies the experience, with badges that you can earn for e.g. making your 1000th edit, and I think a similar thing could be implemented here. The closest analogue we currently have is the Million Award, which is more for experienced contributors and not at all precise in terms of viewcounts. The xtools also have some neat data, such as authorship percentages, that could potentially be ported over to here. I.e. it'd be cool to see "hey, after your recent edits, you're the #3 top contributor to Foobar, and have authored 14.7% of the page!"
• The above said, one issue with the impact module is that it doesn't take into account the type of edit. So if I put a ton of work into a more moderately trafficked article but then correct one comma at the COVID-19 article, it doesn't seem right that the module would essentially then be like "99% of your impact has been at COVID-19". I'm not sure how to address that issue, though.

Help panel

• Experienced editors will absolutely not want this panel floating around their pageview, so it's essential that there be an option in preferences to disable it or it'll meet with a ton of community opposition.
• The help pages listed should be customized based on the type of article being viewed, so for instance, there should be links to biography policies/help pages for biography articles.

I hope all of that is useful! I'm looking forward to seeing this feature implemented! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:45, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb -- thank you for taking a thorough look at the features and for these detailed thoughts! They are definitely helpful. I've lots of follow-up comments and questions, so I hope you have time to respond.

For a newcomer-friendly place to find tasks to work on, what we currently already have is the WP:Task Center, with some preferring Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask. The tasks listed at the Task Center need a bunch of updating, but there are a few of us actively working on it. This feature, once fully developed, looks like it'll be a lot better than the current tools, but you might be able to take some inspiration from them.

Thanks for pointing out the Task Center -- I didn't know about that page. This shows several good examples of editing tasks that we hadn't previously considered (e.g. "Merging/Splitting" and "Image Maintenance"). I'll add those to our list to consider including in the suggested edits feed in the future. I have a few follow-up questions now that I'm looking at it:

• If looks like the Task Center is geared toward newcomers -- how do newcomers discover the page?
• Do you think the page is "working"? (maybe by helping newcomers make their first edits, or by encouraging them to return and continue editing?)
• When newcomers do some of these tasks, like copyediting or expanding short articles, what is the workflow for removing the templates or categories that brought those articles to the page in the first place? This is a question that we haven't been able to figure out yet for our features -- we don't think that a newcomer with only one or two edits will understand how or whether to remove templates/categories.
• In our experience, we think that some newcomers really like adding wikilinks to articles, because it is easy and fun. I noticed that that's not listed as a task in the Task Center. Is that because it is part of "Copy editing"? Or because it's not considered that valuable? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC)^{Signature refactored in by {{u|Sdkb}} talk to make it possible to reply to each section more directly; hope you don't mind.}

Although the Task Center has existed for a while, up until recently, it's been quite hidden, and has not gotten many visitors. I recently spearheaded a redesign of the standard new user welcome template, which introduces it to that template for the first time (and does so quite prominently). It'll take some time to see how well it's working, and I'm not sure quite how we'll measure its efficacy even once it's more active. Similarly, more attention from experienced editors who notice it in the template should help refine the tasks listed there. Adding wikilinks is a great idea; we should add that. The only hesitation is that linking is one of those things that's harder to do well than you might assume. It's still an easy task compared to many, but if new editors assume they don't need to read the instructions, they might start introducing e.g. MOS:SEAOFBLUE or MOS:EGG issues. And there's no specific workflow currently for when to remove the template. Maybe add something like a small (not too prominent, and unchecked by default) checkbox at the bottom that says something like "the issue has been resolved (will remove the maintenance tag)". {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm not too familiar with ORES models, but it'd be nice if editors, in addition with being presented with a bunch of interests, could also specify their own, so that those really passionate about e.g. railroads can get a feed of railroad articles.

I think this is a great idea that we've talked about on the team a couple times -- finding a way to let users type in their own specific topics! There are a couple ways we can think of doing this in the future. For instance, Citation Hunt searches all categories titles. We do want to get to this at some point -- especially because it looks so far that topics are appealing. About 75% of newcomers who have the option to choose topics end up choosing some. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

For the tasks listed in the difficulty filter, one missing easy one is reverting suspected vandalism. You may want to coordinate with the Cluebot folks so that editors can be presented with suspected vandalism and help train Cluebot while reverting.

I'm somewhat surprised to hear this idea, because I would have thought that in order for users to patrol other edits, they need to have some experience editing themselves (and not be newcomers). What's your take? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

Reverting vandalism is not really a difficult task — all it normally requires is clicking the undo button and then warning the offender on their talk page with an automated template (Twinkle has this functionality semi-automated already), and of course good faith (which editors using the tool are likely to have). For our purposes, there are three types of vandalism: (1) vandalism that easily trips Cluebot's filter and gets reverted automatically, (2) vandalism that Cluebot flags, but isn't confident enough to revert, and (3) vandalism subtle or unusual enough that it doesn't trip the filter. New editors seem very well-positioned to help out with the second category. Tools like WP:WikiLoop Battlefield are already functional, and that one has been written about in this article at Fast Company. The one thing I'd be a little concerned about is that editors might be exposed to offensive content, but I'd guess that most such content is in the first category. Vandalism isn't my area of expertise, but I'd certainly suggest talking to others more knowledgeable. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): @Skdb: It's worth noting that, IIRC, most of our current anti-vandalism tools (Twinkle, Huggle, STiki; there are some newer ones I haven't looked into) require the user to be at least autoconfirmed (Twinkle) and often a rollbacker (most others). Presumably this is because the ability to rapidly revert edits would be dangerous in the hands of a bad-faith user.

That being said, it absolutely is possible for IPs and new users to revert vandalism - I often see them do so, presumably in pages they came across anyway - and we could always use more recent changes patrollers. We'd just want to make sure that, in making it easier for them to do so, we're not giving brand-new users tools we currently restrict to more experienced users for fear of abuse. Gaelan 💬✏️ 03:23, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Oops, here's a non-broken ping to Sdkb. Also, oops, I just realized the conversation I'm replying to is almost a year old. Hopefully my feedback was still helpful :) Gaelan 💬✏️ 03:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

:

The 13% of editors who make more than 5 edits and 9% who come back after 3 days seems a little worryingly low.

We definitely want this to be higher, but it's actually high compared to what usual retention rates are like on the wikis. When we talk about "retention", we are talking about the percent of newcomers who make an edit and then return to edit again within some given time period. Looking at two-week retention, most wikis are around 4 or 5%, i.e. 4 or 5% of newcomers end up being retained over two weeks. So when we see that 9% make suggested edits on three separate days, we're encouraged that it seems to be improving on the baseline retention rate. Does that make sense? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

That's good context! Wish we could get the rates much higher, but we'll definitely take an improvement over the status quo! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

How long are you planning for the homepage to be a thing for? Could it transition into something more like the dashboard or community portal as editors become more experienced?

Great question! This comes up a lot -- the idea that experienced users could also benefit from some kind of homepage, and perhaps the page's contents could evolve as a user gains experience. For the foreseeable future, our team is focused on new editor retention. We think we're on a path to improving it, but we haven't quite cracked the problem yet. We want to stick with that for a while (at least another year), and then perhaps we could pivot to thinking about the later parts of a user's journey. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

I'm not sure there are enough active hosts for every new editor to automatically have a mentor. If mentorship ends up being an opt-in feature, what will the page look like for editors without one?

This is definitely something we're concerned about as we deploy these features to bigger wikis. Just doing some projections -- let's say we think that it is comfortable for mentors to get something like 5 or 6 questions on their talk page per month. That's the rate of questions in Czech Wikipedia right now, and they have 15 mentors. English Wikipedia gets 100 times more new accounts per month than Czech Wikipedia. If we assume the same rate of asking questions, English would need 1,500 mentors in order for each of those mentors to only get 5 or 6 questions a month. This is obviously a super high number -- so we're not quite sure what to do about this yet. We'll be trying to experiment on some of the other large wikis, like French Wikipedia, which only gets 10 times more accounts per month than Czech Wikipedia, and figuring out what can work. What is your opinion on how to think about this? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

The Teahouse hosts might have better insight about this. I can see advantages to having a single point person to be connected to, but having a Teahouse-like system allows for quicker and likely more knowledgeable responses. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

"view your mentor's other conversations", presumably going to their talk page, seems unnecessary.

I understand why at first this may seem unnecessary. The reason we did it is because we thought that newcomers might want to gather some context about what a talk page is and what kinds of questions people tend to ask their mentors. They might be worried about asking a question that is too long, or too short, or embarrassing in some way, and perhaps checking out the page gives them confidence to ask the question. We do see newcomers clicking that link. What do you think about this angle? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

That's a good thought! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I love the "your impact" module

Glad you like it! Our designer has definitely been inspired by Local Guides -- so that is good to hear. In the coming year, we're going to be expanding the "impact" concept to a broader "positive reinforcement" effort, thinking about how we can promote awards and recognition in effective ways. For instance, we hypothesize that awards may be more motivating when they come from people than from the system. So we're thinking about questions like: how might we promote "thanks" from experienced editors to newcomers? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

The WikiLove and Barnstar systems are pretty established at en-WP, so you may want to be careful to make sure changes build on them rather than supplanting them, or there may be community opposition. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:11, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

one issue with the impact module is that it doesn't take into account the type of edit

You're right that the current logic is really simple: if you've edited a page recently, it is in your impact module with the number of pageviews that page has gotten, whether you've changed one byte or written the whole page. The main goal with the impact module right now is just trying to drive home the idea to newcomers that their work has impact, but we still aren't sure the best way to give them a more granular understanding of the impact. Interestingly, we see a lot of newcomers return to that module and click on the articles they've edited in the past, either to just look at their work, or to continue working on them. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

so it's essential that there be an option in preferences to disable it or it'll meet with a ton of community opposition

Yes, that makes sense. One thing I want to clarify is that when we turn these features on, we don't turn them on for all users -- just for newcomers registering after the date that the features are deployed to that wiki. The idea is that these are features are most important during a user's first days on the wiki. That said, we would be able to turn them on for broader groups of users if the wiki was interested. And yes, the help panel is collapsible, and it has a setting in the upper right that allows it to be turned off. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC) ^{Signature refactored in}

The help pages listed should be customized based on the type of article being viewed, so for instance, there should be links to biography policies/help pages for biography articles.

Good idea! We originally thought to personalize the pages in the panel based on the editor the user is in -- so different pages for mobile/desktop, or VE/wikitext. But I hadn't thought about different pages based on the type of article -- I've added it to our Phabricator task about personalizing the help pages.

Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb -- thanks for these responses and clarifications. I just have a couple follow-ups if you have a moment:

Maybe add something like a small (not too prominent, and unchecked by default) checkbox at the bottom that says something like "the issue has been resolved (will remove the maintenance tag)".

Is your idea that such a checkbox would be there in the edit summary dialog, where the user also types their summary and says whether they want to watch the page? That's an interesting idea, allowing them to basically say, "Here's my edit, and I believe I have finished all the tasks on this article."

The WikiLove and Barnstar systems are pretty established at en-WP

Great point -- we will be mindful of how the existing positive reinforcement systems work on en-WP, so as not to undermine or confuse them. It's starting to seem like the best way to get that kind of recognition to newcomers is to encourage experienced users to use the existing forms of recognition rather than build new forms.

-- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Yep, that's the thought. We'd certainly want to test it first to see if it results in editors improperly removing tags. And re awards, I agree with Nick's thoughts below. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:45, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Belated feedback from Nick Moyes

This development proposal is extremely welcome, and very exciting. I'm sure a number of Teahouse and Helpdesk volunteers will be willing to sign up as 'mentors' in any trial or roll-out. There are some really great ideas here.

I do apologise for the belated response. I have been collating comments to go into this reply elsewhere, whilst doing my best to assess how things run on Czech Wikipedia. I activated my 'Homepage' there, and by engaging with the mentor assigned to me. I used both a Windows PC and an Android tablet. Because of the language difficulty (and lack of browser translation) I have not yet tried on my iPhone in mobile view. I should say that I could not find a way to activate the Help Panel whilst dummy-editing a Czech article in either VE or Source Editor, so my comment on that particular Panel is based on just the graphic shown.)

Thank you for these thorough thoughts, Nick Moyes! And especially for trying the features out in the real world. You can activate the help panel on Czech Wikipedia in the "Editing" section of your preferences. As the Growth team spreads our features to more wikis, I hope that more people will try the features out before they're deployed. What do you think is the best way? Should we encourage users to visit wikis that already have the features? Or perhaps we could set something up on Test Wiki? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

In terms of positive critical feedback, what few concerns I do have relate almost entirely to nomenclature. I do worry that the names given to certain new elements need to be carefully considered and possibly changed - not only by how new users perceive them, but also by how experienced editors will perceive them.

Your concern about nomenclature makes sense, and we do think about the right names to give things. One thing we'll need to be mindful of as we consider different names is what happens when those names get translated to other languages for other wikis. In other words, a term that may be perfect on English Wikipedia may not be as clear to other language users, and be more difficult to translate. I'll ask our engineers about how the nomenclature could be flexible across wikis. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Medium concerns

• Newcomer homepage. This is a great idea. Being able to optionally activate/deactivate the new Tab in 'Preferences' is very clever. I question the appropriateness of using the name "homepage" on en-wiki, and suggest that an alternative to 'Homepage' is needed. On en-wiki we currently two user-related tabs:

User page

Talk

...so, if there is now to be a third tab, named "Homepage"' I feel the name sounds so similar in purpose to WP:USERPAGE that it will lead to confusion by both new and experienced editors, alike. What alternative titles have been considered? Would "Start Page", "Newcomer's Page", "Task page", Welcome page or even "Ideas page" be more suitable? I might also suggest that in desktop view the Tab it could be positioned somewhat more centrally; i.e. keeping the pair of tabs for userpage/talkpage on the left upper side, with the read/edit/edit source tabs all to the right, and then placing the 'Homepage' Tab equidistantly between them.

Naming this page is definitely tricky. Beyond confusion with "User page", another possible confusion is with "Main Page". Interestingly, as we have spread the feature across wikis, different languages have translated this in ways that work for them. For instance, in Czech Wikipedia, the translation really means "Dashboard", because the translator judged that word to be more appropriate than the Czech word for "Homepage". One thing we want to be mindful of is giving it a name that will continue to be relevant throughout the user's journey. In other words, we don't want to use the word "Welcome" or "Newcomer" in the name because then the page may feel less useful once the user has been on the wiki for weeks or months. And to Sdkb's point above, the page could evolve as the user evolves, to become what an experienced user needs. One pattern we see in many software platforms is that each user has two personalized places: one place where you "broadcast" (i.e. your user page) and one place where you "consume" (i.e. your homepage). Some platforms have these all on one page together, with some parts only the user can see, and some that everyone can see. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Can anyone else see the 'Homepage' Tab? It looks like it's a 'Special' page which only the individual user can see. Please could you confirm this in the documentation.

As currently designed, only you see your own homepage tab, and yes it is a Special page. We thought this felt right given that there are parts of the page that wouldn't really make sense for others to see, like the prompt to confirm your email or the option to ask your mentor a question. We felt that it was more like Preferences or Watchlist in that way. Do you think that's the way it should be? I clarified this point here in the documentation. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Awards The Wikipedia Adventure has fifteen badges which a user receives for completing various tasks. Similarly, users receive a 'well done'notice after reaching certain numbers of edits (1,10,100 etc). Whilst not wanting to see an editor inundated with 'well done' messages, I might suggest a message within 24 hours of their first 'newcomer edits' made via this dashboard, noting how they'd contributed to specific tasks. A second message a week later could summarise their achievements made since then. A third message (say, a month after their first newcomer task edits' could be sent if no subsequent editing had been done. Its aim would be to send a "hey, we miss you!" message to show that they were valued.

Yes! This is the sort of "re-engagement campaign" that we were thinking of trying to do. We were actually considering using email for it (for users who have confirmed email addresses). The idea is that since we're trying to retain newcomers who, for the most part, have unfortunately left the wiki, we wouldn't be able to reach them on-wiki, and instead might have more success in their off-wiki email inboxes. What do you think about that? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Mentor this term is probably not currently well-understood on en-wiki - see essay WP:MENTOR - which has a bit of 'naughty' connotation here, whereas 'adopter' is a much more formal name used at WP:AAU, and is suggestive of longer-term support. I don't see why the current meaning behind 'mentor' on en-wiki can't be changed, though. But maybe 'Welcomer' might be a better alternative? It doesn't imply a long-term commitment from someone to follow the new editor around and guide them. My local Cathedral employs 'Welcomers' to answer simple questions and to orientate visitors. This term could be deployed on en-wiki so as to be less suggestive of someone who follows you right through your whole journey, but simply welcomes you in, answers a few initial questions and is there to help, if you need them. On Czech wiki I liked the clear fact that one editor (Janbery) had been assigned to me - it felt very personal. I was expecting the name to change when I returned, but it hadn't. Nice touch, that! (Czech mentor list) Maybe mentors could be provided with a list of new editors they've been assigned to, thus allowing them to view edits and maybe send a barnstar or two, should they be so inclined.

Regarding the name, I'll figure out with our engineers whether en-WP can adjust the word "mentor". We had a really interesting finding on this feature. In the first version of the homepage, there were two equal calls-to-action: one that let newcomers ask a question to the help desk, and one that let them ask a question to their mentor. Newcomers chose the mentor option almost every single time, and so we think there is something to this "personal touch" aspect. Your thought about mentors seeing who their mentees are -- I'm glad to hear you say this. Many mentors told us this at Wikimania, too, and we started to conceive of a "mentor dashboard" where they could see their mentees, who had been active, who had been reverted, and help keep a nurturing watch over them. What would you want to see on such a page? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Help panel: "Allows newcomers to ask a question directly to the help desk." The WP:HD is a bit technical and less friendly than WP:TH, so I'd suggest the Teahouse is the better first link.

I definitely agree -- each wiki can configure whichever page this feature should point to, and we would expect en-WP to slot the Teahouse in there. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Default editor: Question to everyone: Should we point new users towards Visual editor or Source Editor? It does make sense to show new users how to edit with the simplest editing tool (WP:VE), but it must be made clear to them that it cannot and will not perform more complex tasks. New editors need to be aware of the benefits of learning how to use source editor if they choose to remain and do more than basic editing.

I'll address this below, where Sdkb spoke to it. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Other comments

• Workflow could we have a definition of what the WMF team mean by 'workflow' whenever it is first used in talk pages like this one? It's a team you guys use a lot, but we rarely do.

I'm sorry about that -- I try not to use too much product management jargon. When we product teams say "workflow", we're referring to a sequence of steps a user takes to accomplish a task. So the "suggested edits workflow" starts when a user first sees the option to do suggested edits and ends when they complete an edit. Does that make sense? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• There's a tiny typo in this image file 'Gradually guides' should be changed to 'gradually guide

Got it -- thanks for pointing it out. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Hard or Harder. Which word sounds less daunting when describing the level of complexity of new editor tasks? Personally, I think 'Harder' sounds less extreme than 'Hard'.

Interesting question. One of the things we were thinking about in designing that moment is that we wanted users to understand that edits to Wikipedia can be all different shapes, sizes, and difficulties. And we wanted to communicate to the newcomer that the edits they may have in mind when they arrived (frequently, creating a new article) are probably too difficult for them to attempt right now. We want them to think, "Oh, creating a new article is hard. I better start with something easy." What do you think about this? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• How is a new user alerted to their 'homepage'? Is it activated to begin with, or always, and can it be deactivated/removed in any way other than in 'Preferences'?

Newcomers find out about their homepage from a set of features we call the "discovery" features. Unfortunately, the only place that we have those documented is here in Phabricator. They consist of:

• A clear button after account creation encouraging users to visit their homepage.
• A popup pointing out where their homepage is (if they don't choose to follow the button).
• A button on the "Contributions" page if the user has no contributions yet, encouraging them to visit their homepage to start contributing.
• And when the user clicks to confirm their email address, the link now takes them to their homepage.

We recently did an analysis that showed that all those channels help newcomers find their homepage, and that depending on the wiki, between 40% and 70% of newcomers do visit their homepage soon after account creation. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• I often like to re-shape floating windows, so can the 'Help' panel be modified, or will it have just one fixed format?

We have heard this request a few times, and it is on our longer to-do list for the help panel. It's helpful to hear that it is also your preference. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• In the discussion above, Sdkb asked about removing templates. I agree that we can't expect new users to understand how and when it's OK to remove templates from the top of pages. That said, if they're directly addressing an inline template like it should be reasonable to advise them how to remove it. (I noticed on Czech wiki that few if any of the pages offered me for editing had big top-of-the-page notices).
• Impact: - I don't have a problem knowing that 10,000 people have viewed an article on which I've simply added a comma or deleted a space; if I've genuinely helped improve the encyclopaedia with my teeny, tiny edit, then other people will still see my minuscule contribution and benefit from it. I don't think there's any other way of showing impact of a big edit, other then multiplying page views by the total change in bytes, but that would be a ridiculous thing to attempt. But, another suggestion: how about providing an additional link to a view recent traffic graph of, say, the last five articles a new user has edited? That could be additional visual encouragement? (Example on en-wiki; Example on cs-wiki))

The impact module does do that now! If you click the number of pageviews itself, it leads to the pageviews analysis tool for that article. I think my takeaway here is that it's not evident that that's what that link does, and so perhaps newcomers don't realize they can click it for deeper analysis. We'll think about that in future designs. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Implementation I'd like to know more about how this exciting new feature will be implemented on large wikis like English Wikipedia, please. Because of concerns (expressed by Sdkb in their post, above) over matching new users to 'mentors' with a risk of swamping either individuals or the help desks, I assume there will first be some form of beta-testing, then a gradual rollout? I might be worried if it were suddenly implemented in one huge go - and I'm sure you folks are not planning to do that. I would hope that a small tranche of new editors would be given this functionality, and compared with a sample of new users who are not so the impact can be judged? I would certainly be happy to be added to a list of people either to trial the 'Homepage', or to volunteer as 'Mentors' - irrespective of what these elements end up being called here.

Great question -- we are also thinking a lot about the right way to scale this up, and that's why we're starting the conversation here early. One thing that will help is that we're deploying the features on increasingly large wikis over the course of the coming months. For instance, it is currently deployed on Arabic Wikipedia (which gets about 9,000 new accounts per month), and in May, we plan to deploy to French Wikipedia (which gets about 17,000 new accounts per month). This should help us learn about scale -- but English Wikipedia (which gets about 150,000 new accounts per month), is clearly a very different situation. I like the idea of deploying first to small groups of newcomers. We'll definitely be able to do that, which can help us identify any issues early on. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Longer term, I could envisage that the 'Homepage' tab could evolve into a user-modifiable 'Newcomers' panel to offer something of greater use to the more experienced editor. There are a handful of really quite valuable 'Preferences' which are currently lost amongst the myriad of other settings at Special:Preferences (eg. 'Prompt me if I forget an edit summary'/'Enable Twinkle' etc) It could also become a place for an editor to compile a set of 'Quick links'of 'Favourite pages', perhaps offering the ability to define and store a set number of frequently used pages - be they Help pages, Policy Pages, Sandbox pages or articles currently being edited. But, as you rightly say, that's something for the future.
• Live feedback Marshall: Have you considered in these 'lockdown times' of running something like a Zoom meeting to demonstrate an en-wiki version and gather verbal feedback from a handful of helpful, active editors interested and concerned with retention and welcoming? I'd be quite happy to participate if you felt there is value in doing so. Hearing one person say stuff, and then hearing a second person reply can often result in a third person coming up with some useful feedback thery m,ight not otherwise have done- and it's far easier than via this cold typing. Failing that, when you're ready, why not get yourself invited onto one of the hour-long recordings run by Fuzheado at Wikipedia Weekly Network. The Network covers a wide range of topics in quite some considerable depth, and this one would be a great opportunity to bring in Czech and other editors to explain how your initial rollout has gone, and what your future plans are for other Wikipedias.

I think this is a great idea for us to do at some point -- I agree that there is nothing quite like a live conversation for sorting things out and generating ideas. I didn't know about the Wikipedia Weekly Network. That looks really cool. I would prefer to have those larger conversations a big farther down the road -- perhaps a few months from now -- because I'd like to be able to speak to our experience on some of the other large wikis (like French Wikipedia), and because I would like our team to be up at full capacity (we're currently spread thin because of the pandemic). Would you be willing to help coordinate with us when it's time? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

...I hoping some of this feedback might be of value. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:18, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for mention, Nick. It's nice to hear those words. Take care, --janbery (talk) 17:43, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Agreed on all of these points/suggestions. Regarding the question of whether to use VisualEditor or the Source Editor, that's a hugely loaded question given VisualEditor's very charged history at en-WP, so that's something to step very carefully around, and to ideally break off into a distinct separate conversation, so that opposition to using one editor or the other doesn't bleed over into more general opposition. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:42, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb and Nick Moyes -- thanks for bringing up this question of which of the two editors newcomers are "nudged" toward by the features. We thought that different communities might have different preferences here, and so we've built the feature such that each wiki can configure which editor opens by default when newcomers begin doing suggested edits (the user would be able to switch). So far, all the communities we've worked with have preferred Visual Editor (Czech, Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese Wikipedias). When it is time for us prepare these features for English Wikipedia, I think we'll be able to implement the community's preference here for these open-ended sorts of edits, and maybe we'll have some data from the preceding wikis on how their choices are working out. I think Nick Moyes makes a good point about the simultaneous need to (a) give the user a good first experience so that they'll succeed and want to return, while (b) also making sure they know about the source editor and its capabilities. I also want to mention that we're in the early phases of planning a project called "structured tasks". The idea is to hold newcomers' hands as they do their first edits, so that it is clear to them how to get through the several steps of simple edits (e.g. click "Edit", highlight some text, click the link icon, choose the right article, click publish...) I'll return with more information about "structured tasks", because I think that this question about Visual Editor vs. source editor will be relevant there, as well. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

New discussion: structured tasks

Hi all (especially Nick Moyes and Sdkb) -- I wanted to let you know that the Growth team is thinking about a new project called "structured tasks". It builds on the "newcomer tasks" project that we've already posted about here, but is geared toward breaking down simple editing workflows (like copyediting or adding wikilinks) into steps that are easy for newcomers to accomplish, potentially assisted by algorithms. We think this may help unlock editing for many newcomers, and so we're looking for community members to help us think it all through as we design and plan. The full project page is here on mediawiki.org, and the discussion is happening on the talk page. You're also welcome to discuss on this page. Sdkb already weighed in -- thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Awareness

Hi Marshall,

After seeing this on the AfC talk page today I've dropped it in a couple of other places, including the new WMF Village Pump page, the Discord, and the Wikipedia talk:Help desk (while less beginner-oriented than the Teahouse, they still handle a lot of that traffic), in the hope of driving a few more eyes towards it.

I was unaware of it until now, but will get some feedback in during the next couple of days, so I imagine some others are in the same position. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:30, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nosebagbear -- thanks for checking out the page and spreading the word! I just found on Discord where you posted, but I don't usually keep an eye on Discord. Would you be willing to let me know if anyone follows up there -- I know you directed them to the wiki page, so hopefully discussion happens here. And I'm looking forward to your own feedback! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Feedback on August 2020 designs for "add a link"

Back in May 2020, I posted on this page to draw attention to a discussion about our next project: "structured tasks". We learned a huge amount from community members in that conversation, and it helped us advance the project to the design phase, where we are now. We've now posted mockups and interactive prototypes of two design concepts for the "add a link" structured task. We hope English Wikipedians can join in the discussion happening here. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by MMiller (WMF) (talk • contribs) 03:46, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Beginning the discussion of deployment

Hello Sdkb, Nick Moyes, ProcrastinatingReader, Pelagic, Czar, and Barkeep49 -- I'm pinging you because you have all been following along with the development of the Growth features over the past years, and have shaped what they've become. Thank you for your support so far! In November 2020, we found that the features statistically improve newcomer outcomes. Because of these results, we're now confident in spreading the features to more and more wikis. Right now, they are deployed on 19 Wikipedias, including big ones like French, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, and Polish (with no problems so far). We're talking with the German, Italian, and Spanish communities about deployment, as well.

I know that deploying these features on English Wikipedia would be a big decision, and require community consensus and careful planning. I'm asking for your advice on when and how to get such a discussion going, knowing that it might take time to unfold. One thing to keep in mind is that it will be easy to safely test the features in English Wikipedia by deploying them to only, say, 5% of new accounts. This way, if there are any issues with vandalism or patrolling, they'll be contained.

What do you all think about this? Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

A rollout beginning with only a small fraction of new accounts certainly seems safe to me. The discussion could perhaps take place here, with invites to WP:VPR, WT:Help Project, WT:Teahouse, and possibly WP:CENT. I'd recommend placing {{Notified}} here to make it clear that the discussion was broadly advertised. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:08, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the first step is to put together what the ask will be. I agree with Sdkb that a small scale test to begin with (in the range of 3-5%) is going to help make consensus easier to achieve. If you go the formal consensus route, that is asking for an RfC, it will take 30 days (most likely) and then unless it's very obvious a formal close. It might be that for a small trial (3-5% for a month or two which given the number of accounts on enwiki might be sufficient for good data) could get by with a more informal consensus, along with notification as suggested by Skdb. To roll this out beyond a test group would definitely take an RfC which is why if data can be gleaned first, you can then do a very high profile ask including CENT. In terms of current notification I would just add WP:VPWMF to the list. If it goes "big" in terms of needing an RfC and all I'd also add WP:AN to the list of places to notify. Hope that all makes sense. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:52, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Would there be a way to specify an account that would be dropped into this test pool, so I could make a test account to get the feeling of what is like from a no script/permissions viewpoint? Regardless of that, the test method, run for month, generate feedback, generate summary of that, present to Community for full rollout all seems like a good route. Nosebagbear (talk) 01:33, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for weighing in with these ideas! As you recommend, I'm going to draw up a plan for which actions to take in which order, and I'll post here to see what you all think, before we start doing anything. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): Any timeframe on this? I'm excited to see this (hopefully) tried out on enwiki. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: I'm glad to hear you're enthusiastic! I've written up a proposed plan for how to go about a test of the features on enwiki, and I'll post it next week for you to take a look at. I'm hoping you (and other community members) can help publicize the test to places on the wiki that need to hear about it. Along those lines, I posted a message at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse to encourage some of the hosts to follow along with the work here, since the Growth mentor feature has some overlap with the work they do. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 04:29, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Mentors for beta?

Hi @MMiller (WMF): - I'm looking forward to seeing your proposed en.wiki beta test outline and took a moment to re-read everything on the page above. Did the Growth Team come to any conclusion on how to handle needing so many mentors if the ratios seen on other wikis was scaled up to en.wiki's size? TH/HD obviously benefit that they have lots of people who answer questions who aren't technically "hosts" or similar. In any case, if your proposal includes any consideration of how to handle that aspect in the beta stage then I'd be happy to be part of any such group. Keep up the great work and great community interaction Nosebagbear (talk) 01:14, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a close read of the page, Nosebagbear. I think you're picking up on something important with the needs for mentorship. I just took a look at the frequency of mentor questions in other wikis, and there is a wide range, making it difficult to anticipate the volume that will happen on en.wiki. For instance, newcomers on Arabic Wikipedia ask about 5 times as many questions per capita as newcomers on Vietnamese Wikipedia. Czech and French Wikipedias are in between. I think the small-scale test will allow us to benchmark the volume of questions we can expect per capita on en.wiki. Another important variable is how many questions per week mentors would want to receive. On Arabic Wikipedia, the mentors are comfortable getting about 12 questions per week, but on French they are only getting about 3 per week. Taking these two variables together, we could estimate how many mentors we would need for full deployment. If that number ends up being prohibitively large, we'll have to take a step back and think about how the feature would need to be changed to work well for en.wiki. But I think for a test in which the Growth features only go to 2% of en.wiki (about 650 newcomers per week), we would be safe with only about 5 mentors signed up (based on the frequencies from other wikis). Does this all make sense?

I definitely think we should ask Teahouse hosts their opinion on mentorship. We wouldn't want the Growth features to conflict or confuse what the Teahouse is doing successfully. Hopefully, the two initiatives can be complementary. I'm going to post a draft plan next week, and I'll invite Teahouse hosts to reflect on these features and help us think through our plans. Does that sound right? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 06:24, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

That all sounds a good way of getting rolling on it Nosebagbear (talk) 11:16, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Mentors can sign-up at WP:Growth Team features/Mentor list. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Potential plan for experimental deployment

Hi Sdkb, Nick Moyes, ProcrastinatingReader, Nosebagbear, Pelagic, Czar, Barkeep49, and Ipigott -- after taking in all your advice from this page and talking about it with the team, we've put together an outline for how we might try out the Growth features on English Wikipedia. The main goal of this plan is to determine the extent to which the Growth features would be a net positive for English Wikipedia.

We want these features to help newcomers become involved, without increasing the burden on the experienced users who monitor changes and answer questions. Because the plan proposes deploying to a small portion of newcomers, there will not be enough data to statistically calculate impact on metrics like newcomer retention (we can run such experiments further down the line), but there will be enough data to identify whether the features seem to be generating good edits without too many damaging edits and interactions. We'll also be able to benchmark the volume of edits and mentor questions we might expect when scaling up to more newcomers.

If this outline looks good to you, I can ask people from potentially interested groups (like Teahouse and Help Project) to look it over, as well. And then, most importantly, we'll need your help to make sure that sufficient notice is given around the wiki such that it's okay to proceed -- since you all know the right way to unfold a project like this. We're not in a rush to proceed with this; it's more important that community members have had a chance to weigh in to make sure we do it right.

1. We make the Growth features available for all users as preferences defaulted off. This means no users would have them on by default, but would allow community members involved in this discussion to turn them on manually and try them out. It's important to note that any users who notice these checkboxes in their preferences would also be able to turn them on, but we would expect very few people to do that.
2. To try out the mentorship functionality, we would need to sign up about five community members to be mentors. We would make a sign up page to list these usernames (like this, as on other wikis), and the feature will read the mentor names automatically.
3. Community members take a couple weeks to try things out, ask questions, and identify any issues.
4. When we're ready, we start deploying to 2% of new accounts. This means that for all accounts created after the deployment, a random 2% of them will have the features, and the rest will not. On English Wikipedia, this will amount to about 2,600 accounts per month. Looking at trends on the other wikis with the Growth features, that might yield something like 500 article edits and 100 mentor questions per month (though this varies so much by wiki that it is hard to predict). We expect five mentors to be able to handle the question volume.
5. During the test, if anything problematic is occurring, like runaway vandalism or abuse of the mentor feature, we'll be able to discuss and turn off the feature if needed.
6. After a month of deploying to 2% of newcomers, we'll evaluate how things have gone. We'll be able to see all edits and mentor questions made through the features using edit tags in Recent Changes. Specifically, we will want to look at:
   1. The revert rate of suggested edits. We want that rate to be about the same as or better than the usual revert rate for newcomer edits on English Wikipedia (about 15%).
   2. The volume of mentor questions. This would allow us to extrapolate how many mentors would be needed to handle 100% of new accounts. In English Wikipedia, it's possible that this would be in the hundreds, which the community might consider unmanageable. If that's the case, we'll need to rethink the way the mentorship feature should work on this wiki.
   3. The quality of mentor questions. While on other wikis that have Growth features, the majority of mentor questions are appropriate for wiki work, it will be important to get a sense of whether that trend holds up on English.
7. Then we'll discuss the results here and decide what, if anything, to do next. If things go well in the test, perhaps a good next step would be to deploy to 25% of newcomers, in preparation for deploying to 100%. And perhaps community members will think it is appropriate to set up an RFC before scaling the feature up.

How does this sound? Is this a plan that it would be okay to get started just with consensus of the users on this page, and then an announcement when it begins? We definitely need help from you all to navigate the right way to go about this in English Wikipedia. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

• @MMiller (WMF): while the plan seems fine, is there a reason you don't think that, say, 5% would be viable as a trial rate - or just an abundance of caution? If that 5% (c. 6500 accounts/month) could allow the retention question to be answered that would be a big plus. On the consensus one, hmmm, I'd drop a notice on VPR pointing to this page if I were you - it would help prevent issues when you roll to the 25% stage with individuals say they missed a chance to hear about it at the start. I'd also be happy to be one of the mentors. I'd suggest more than 5 - if a couple of us took a week off it would have a substantial impact. We'll still be able to figure out if we'd be overwhelmed even we're receiving comparatively few questions per mentor by use of some suitable maths. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:39, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for looking it over so quickly, Nosebagbear. I did propose 2% to be cautious -- it is about the smallest number with which we could get a good sense of how things go. Unfortunately, even taking it up to 5% would not allow us to scientifically detect increases in things like retention without several months of data. That's because retention is a rare occurrence (about 5% of new accounts end up being retained), and so when we increase that small number, it is a small increase to a small number, requiring lots of data to build up statistical significance. Perhaps an experiment like that, though, could be possible at the 25% threshold.

I'm glad you're willing to be a mentor! And yes, I think it would be fine to have more than five. The only thing is, I don't think it should be too many: if we have, say, twenty, then it's possible that each mentor only gets a couple questions and some get none. That would make it hard for the mentors to speak to what it would be like to mentor under higher volume. Based on your advice, I think we should shoot for about ten mentors. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I had the same thought as Nosebagbear, but that makes sense. If there would be benefits to starting out at the 5% level rather than 2%, I think there would likely be plenty enough editors interested in being mentors to prevent the volume from becoming too much. But I definitely understand/appreciate the impulse to roll out cautiously, so 2% sounds fine as an initial level. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:56, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the suggested edits functionality is only available on the apps (iOS and Android)? Will it be available on mobile web or desktop? Is the platform availability the same for mentor questions? Whilst I think 20 questions per mentor per month is reasonable, I feel like getting more than 5 mentors is a good idea for safekeeping (to stop anyone being overwhelmed, for example). A couple of the regulars/hosts at WP:Teahouse & Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user may make for a good choice for mentors, and even if not they may be well positioned to advise on your plans in general (pinging a handful of names from those pages I know of and think would be a good fit: @CaptainEek, DESiegel, Dreamy Jazz, Rosguill, Bilorv, Oshwah, and Joe Roe). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: you're right that until recently, suggested edits were an experience only on the apps. What the Growth team has done is adapt those learnings for mobile web and desktop. All the features we're talking about (including suggested edits and mentorship) are for the web, and so can be exposed to the bulk of the English Wikipedia users (when we're ready). Thank you for pinging some potential mentors! I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of this whole feature set/plan, and also hope that you'll be part of this test group of mentors. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I would note that I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I would be happy to be a mentor as I look at my notifications at least once a day. I would advise that 5 mentors is probably too small and 10 seems better. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:56, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Are people getting assigned mentors at random, or choosing them (maybe based on their self-descriptions)? I'm potentially interested in signing up at a later date and this does look like a very good plan overall. I started editing in 2013 with the "gettingstarted" featured (I think now defunct) and it was really helpful, I think. — Bilorv (talk) 22:32, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Bilorv --

Presentation of the "mentorship module" on the newcomer homepage

thanks for checking out the plan. The way the mentorship feature works now is that when an account is created, a mentor is assigned at random to that account from the list of mentors. Then the newcomer sees their mentor on their homepage, along with whatever the mentor sets as their "introductory" blurb (see image at right for what this looks like). I agree that it could be good for newcomers to choose mentors based on their descriptions, or perhaps based on shared interests -- like if mentors selected a handful of interests from a list (e.g. "math", "music", "engineering"). One consideration here is that we believe there's some value in just showing newcomers that they already have a mentor assigned, as opposed to making them proactively choose one. We think (but don't know for sure) that it makes more of them comfortable with asking questions. I definitely think we should explore this idea of matching mentors more deliberately in the future. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

That all makes complete sense. I think the optimal thing might be to have mentees choose tags initially that are used as both the basis on which mentors are assigned and the initial/default settings for the pages/tasks they're suggested, but I imagine that's quite a big thing to achieve technically into an already-existing system and assigning a mentor at random is definitely alright and has its advantages. — Bilorv (talk) 01:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): - what happens if a Mentor doesn't answer a question in, say, a couple of days? Does it just no get answered, or is there a mechanism to drop the question to another mentor? And while not relevant for the trial, if a mentor withdraws themselves from the list, will the system allocate a new mentor to those now without one? Nosebagbear (talk) 23:20, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: good questions. I think you're touching on something that is both a strength and a weakness of the mentorship feature. We wanted to build it so that questions would get posted to a place that mentors already look at and use (i.e. their talk page), as opposed to some new page that they have to check separately. That means, though, that after a mentor question gets posted, it's just a talk page revision like any other one, and doesn't have special properties with which we could do something like transfer it to another mentor. That said, there are a few things we've added and are working on that help:

• Mentor dashboard: this is the biggest upcoming improvement to how mentorship works. In most communities where we've deployed mentorship, the mentors ask for a way to see who their mentees are and how they're doing. The dashboard will show the list of mentees and stats about them, and will eventually also contain a module to list unanswered questions (just done by parsing wikitext from the mentor's talk page). Perhaps in the future we could consider a central place to list all unanswered questions so that mentors can keep each other accountable and cover for each other. What do you think? You (and everyone) are welcome to chime in with opinions on that project's talk page. We're just beginning development on that project now.
• Mark as away: we have some work in progress through which a mentor could mark themselves "away", and that would cause all questions asked to them to be redirected to substitute mentors (Phab T227876)
• Claim Mentee: randomly assigning mentors works well for newcomers that organically create accounts, but it causes issues for organized editing events. Say that someone is teaching a group of 15 people how to edit Wikipedia at an edit-a-thon: they want to be the mentor of all fifteen of them; not for them all to have random mentors. With this feature, a mentor can "claim" all those mentees by entering their usernames into the special page after their accounts are created.

For your question about what happens if a mentor withdraws themselves, what happens is that we stop assigning that mentor to new mentees, but the old ones retain them as their mentor on their homepage. We don't yet have support for reassigning mentees to a new mentor. We don't expect this to have been too much of a problem because mentees usually ask questions during their first couple days on the wiki; it's not like a mentor withdrawing themselves continues to get many messages from their legacy mentees from months past. But it is something we would like to add in the future (it's a similar use case to the "Mark as away" one from above).

-- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Those all sound like good things - I'd certainly think a general pool of unanswered questions would be good, though you'd probably want it to have some max time or an ability for individuals to remove it from the list without answering it (such as if wasn't actually a question or similar). Nosebagbear (talk) 00:37, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

The plan is very well thought out already IMO, so not much I can add there! In addition, I'd like to say thanks for being one of the most communicative product managers I've seen in a while (in general at any company, not just in a WMF-enwiki sense). I'm sure the rollout will go well! Re mentoring: not sure I can mentor in this pilot, in part because I'm trying to refrain from anything feeling like a commitment at this time. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:34, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

That feels like a reasonable plan to me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:16, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

• I've dropped a note on WP:VPR giving a mention of this discussion - I don't think it needs actual Village Pump agreement, but with a mention those who have an interest but have missed it thus far can come review the plan. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:13, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
• This sounds like a great idea!! I would be more than happy to be a mentor, editor retention is my absolute number one concern on Wikipedia and I am a frequent adopter and help question answerer. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi all

In case it might be relevant, you might like to look at the old Wiki Guides pages.

It was an idea from the WMF to try and retain new editors. Unfortunately, I had to drop out due to real-life issues a few months after start up, and have only discovered it's demise in the last few days after a conversation with another editor - User_talk:Jay#Resources_page.

I was really only involved with the infrastructure creation, and some discussions, and just assumed it was plodding along welcoming new editors and guiding them through the intricacies of WikiWorld.

It only lasted five months, which I could not understand, after such a promising start, why had it failed?

After a bit of research I discovered it seems the community decided to go down a different path.

It is sad, because in 2019, 8 years after it's demise, the retention was 10% less, with over double the edits of 2011 (see discussion with Jay for table of figures).

It seems that the only thing to come out of it was consensus to make only autoconfirmed editors capable of making new pages - which is, to me at least, an appearance of being diametrically opposed to the principles of an encylopedia that anyone can edit.

It really is perturbing that such a promising start was so easily turned into a puff of smoke.

Please, do read the material, as I wonder how many OTHER times this sort of effort might have been started and waylaid in the last 10 years!!

It seems ironic that village pump has once again been considered for input. Chaosdruid (talk) 16:30, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello Chaosdruid -- thank you for pointing out the Wiki Guides project. I think in addition to that project, there was also the Adopt-a-user program, and of course, the Teahouse. I believe that of those three, the Teahouse is the one that showed the most success in newcomer outcomes. There are a couple of interesting papers about those latter two:

• Adopt-a-user
• Teahouse

I think that the mentorship capabilities in the Growth features are more similar to the Teahouse than to the Wiki Guides or Adopt-a-user programs, in that it is meant to be quicker and more transactional. Newcomers frequently have a quick question when they get stuck (e.g. "How do I add a photo to an article?"), and fewer of them are looking for the longer-term mentorship relationship that Wiki Guides and Adopt-a-user were meant to foster. With the Growth features, those longer-term relationships can certainly happen organically, but there's no commitment required from the newcomer just to ask their first question. I think we'll see how that looks and feels on English and then reflect. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

No worries, I was more concerned with the table I made though, which clearly shows a 10% lower retention rate by 2019 after around 10 years trying to make it better !! (I would have used current figures, but couldn't work out how to get the new tool to do it) Chaosdruid (talk) 06:28, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

This plan sounds like a great idea, and I'd like to be a mentor. I usually fight vandalism, and it's honestly quite sad to see how many editors are just confused about why their edits were wrong (although, I must say, many of them are SPAs). I created a separate section for a list of volunteer mentors. Pinging User:Nosebagbear, User:Dreamy Jazz, User:CaptainEek (who have previously volunteered to be mentors). Although, one thing: The mentor system seems like the Teahouse except more personalized, and slower response times. Looks like we're trading speed for personalization. Well, there's only one way to find out if it works! Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 13:21, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Say, how are articles 'chosen' for filters like copy edit and linking? I'm trying to do this at the test Wikipedia, but it doesn't seem to be working. Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 14:26, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Sungodtemple -- good question, and thanks for trying the features out. The articles are sourced using maintenance templates (like the ones you've put on your example page), which indicate that the article needs links, copyediting, etc. Next week, we'll start setting this up for English Wikipedia, and I'll ask community members to indicate on a Phabricator task which maintenance templates they want to align with each task type (here's an example of when we did this for Russian Wikipedia).

For Test Wikipedia, we've just hard-coded the test articles into the feed, i.e. we're not actually replenishing it with new articles as templates get added to them. So here's how to try the workflow out on Test Wikipedia:

1. Go to the "User profile" tab of your preferences, and turn on both homepage checkboxes at the bottom.
2. Go to the "Editing" tab of your preferences, and turn on the help panel.
3. Click you username along the top of the page to go to your homepage.
4. Choose a task from the feed.

Please let me know if the above works!

Also, you might be interested to read about something we're planning for the future around how the articles get "chosen". We're soon going to pilot a way to do this algorithmically on a few wikis, in a task type called "add a link". It will find articles that need wikilinks added and then point the user to the specific link suggestion based on an algorithm. We think this will help new kinds of people edit easily, especially from mobile. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I see. I've tried it out and it works well. Thank you! Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 18:35, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Preliminary mentor list

• Nosebagbear (talk) 19:28, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
• {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:58, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
• Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 13:21, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
• — Wug·a·po·des​ 08:55, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Update: The list is at WP:Growth Team features/Mentor list.

Configuration of the mentors list

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T281896

Hello future mentors! I'm Trizek (WMF), community relations specialist supporting the Growth team. I'm taking care of the configuration of the features for the trial.

First of all, thank you for volunteering for this trial.

To try mentoring features, we need a mentors list, hosted somewhere at English Wikipedia. This list must be formatted in a certain way:

• mentors have to sign up using this special formatting [[User:Name]]|Description (add no links nor wikitext in it, it will break)
  • The Description is a short introduction of yourself that would encourage newcomers to contact you.
• Protect that page. We advise to protect it so that only Extended confirmed users can sign-up. This would prevent well-attentioned but not-much experienced users to sign up.

Details guidance is available here.

Can you take care of it, and provide me the link?

Thank you, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Here is the page: WP:Growth Team features/Mentor list. Someone please protect it; I am not an admin. Also, I have no idea how to set the mentorship feature up... Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 17:18, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Sungodtemple. We take care of setting up the mentorship system, and everything else! Next steps will be an invite for you to try the features out. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

The page protection is  Done. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:07, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Comments from the African Wikimedian Community

Hello colleagues from the African community who are supporting the deployment of Growth Features on English Wikipedia please look at the sections below and comment where necessary. You can either show support on behalf of your affiliate after consulting them, or yourself. Don't forget to add your signature. sandiooses^TextMe 19:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

@Sandiooses @Owula kpakpo @M-Mustapha -- thank you for following along with this work, and I'm glad you think they'll be helpful in your communities! I hope that some of you sign up to be mentors during the test. You can do that on this page. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Showing support

1. I support the deployment of new Growth Features on English Wikipedia. sandiooses^TextMe 19:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
2. I fully support the deployment of the new Growth Features on English Wikipedia. It's going to go a long way in helping to guide new editors in a very timely process. Owula kpakpo (talk) 20:25, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
3. Yes! As a community organizer and new editor recruiter, I support the development of these features on the English Wikipedia. The Living love ^talk 10:23, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Try the tools

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T281896

Growth features are now available at English Wikipedia. They aren't available for newcomers yet, only experienced users can enable them in their personal preferences.

To test the tools, please go to your user preferences on one of these wikis and then:

• enable the Help panel in the Editing tab.
• enable the Newcomer homepage in the User profile tab.

This will give you access to the Homepage (Special:Homepage), and, from there, you will be able to:

• contact your mentor
• select your favorite topics and tasks to make some Suggested edits
• browse help pages
• see your impact

You will also see the Help panel being visible when editing, or browsing help pages.

We encourage you to actively try the tools, both on mobile and desktop if you can. The tools have been configured to use some templates and help pages, but these may not be the best ones. Please let us know if you think some elements should be changed.

Please share your questions and thoughts with Marshall and myself, by creating a new section on this talk page. Please also check the documentation and the FAQ about these features.

Happy testing! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

For some reason the 'articles you've edited' rectangle at the top also shows articles where your edits were reverted. Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 11:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting this, Sungodtemple. I reported it as phab:T281975. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Sungodtemple, MMiller (WMF): this is really good stuff. Some comments. 1) the text in the popout help menu advances fairly quickly. We have a large number of non-native speakers and I worry that it will go too fast for them. How was that speed determined? 2) When I first opened the screen Mohammad Shahabuddin was my most viewed article which makes sense since he's been in the news. However, after I applied page protection to it, it dropped off and YouTube became my most viewed (which was the article I would have expected). What is the logic that is determining what articles to exclude? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep49, thank you for your feedback.

1. It advances quickly to show users they can discover the different steps. We are considering to change this design.
2. The logic is to show 5 articles max edited by the user, with most seen articles first. The number of views is the one for the last 60 days, as indicated. However, we never considered the interactions with admin actions. This is something we need to investigate.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Well the admin action does create an edit in this case (adding the PP icon which is why it was on there in the first place). I wondered if it intentionally dropped off the list because I semi-protected it (i.e. the list was designed to exclude pages with page protection). This doesn't seem to be the case. so I'm glad I reported it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh I've figured it out @Trizek (WMF). It's showing me views since my most recent edit. Since I edited that article today there is no updated data for how many views its had. Is there a reason that it's being calculated from the most recent rather than the first edit to the article? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Hmm guess that's not it since I just made an edit to YouTube and it's still at the top of my list. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Impact is calculated on the edits you made yesterday and the days before. When the module is empty, it encourages newcomers to make some edits. We only show the page views if some edits have been made, with a delay. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 -- I just want to add some detail to @Trizek (WMF)'s explanation of the auto-advance in the help panel. The steps advance every five seconds, not because we expect the users to read each one during the five seconds, but rather so that the changes draw the user's eye to the panel such that they discover that there are different steps to look at. Then they can click on the tabs to read at their own pace. We have an idea, though, to change the panel from having those numbered tabs for each "quick tip" to instead having arrow buttons to navigate back and forth through them.

About page protection, it's possible that protecting pages changes the way they're processed for the impact module. We'll look into it.

Also, Barkeep49, did you want to sign up as a mentor? If so, please add yourself here. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:53, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest that cycling through is not helpful because they are linear and we won't them reading them all. However you all do it, I'd make that change personally. As for impact, I really do think it's a bug. When I first looked at the page Shahabuddin was there. I edited the page and it disappeared and it has stayed gone. If it was because I also protected it well that's a bug no genuine user of the tool will come across. But I would encourage you to test it to make sure that's what it was because. And no @MMiller (WMF) I do not intend to be a mentor at this time, as my arbing and UCoC drafting means that I can't be assured of having any wiki capacity at a given moment and don't want to take on a newcomer who I may not be able to adequately support. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:12, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 -- got it; thanks for explaining your thinking. We'll check out that potential bug with the impact module. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 03:44, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&tagfilter=mentorship+module+question&limit=50&days=7&urlversion=2 you can see mentor questions asked. Sungodtemple (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

You can also see Suggested edits. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

You may notice new users who create an account, and then turn the Growth features on. It can happen since a lot of new accounts are created daily at English Wikipedia. Since the tools have been promoted for other wikis (where they are active now) and the documentation on mediawikiwiki explains how to enable the features, some users will connect the dots! We may also have the case of some curious people who check on their preferences and try to tick a box. This may lead to suggested edits being made by new users, or some (real) questions being posted to mentors. Consider it as a pre-trial! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

How to write a good article

The "General editing help" tab has a link called "How to write a good article", but it links to the entirety of the Manual of Style, an absolutely behemoth document that even I don't know cover to cover. For starters, it should not be the first link in the list, it should probably come last. Secondly, it should link to a more concise page, an essay if it has to. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Is Help:Introduction linked from there? I can't remember and I've turned off the tools. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep49, No, its not one of the five pre-linked items. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:59, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Several of the items do link to pages in the Help:Intro series, though.

Regarding the MoS, Help:Introduction to the Manual of Style/All would be a simpler alternative to the full MoS, which I agree is unwieldy. It's impossible to be both comprehensive and instructive to newcomers in the same place, which is why simplified pages are so important (the main problem being that there are tons of competing "simple" versions that aren't actually all that simple).

More generally, I've been paying attention to the language used in the help tab. Most of it is good, and I sympathize that whoever wrote it had a tricky task trying to be quick and concise but to not oversimplify. But a few things irk me a bit, like the fact that tab 5 of the references instructions says "Reliable sources include books, news organizations, and magazine articles." Not all media are reliable, so it'd go a long way to change it to "Reliable sources include reputable books,..." Also, there's no way the "how to create an article" link should go to the retired Wikipedia:Article wizard/version1, rather than the modern article wizard or Help:Your first article.

I hope that the help links text is eventually stored somewhere on-wiki, where the community will be able to modify it as our help resources evolve. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:38, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Configuring links and templates

@CaptainEek @Barkeep49 @Sdkb -- I'm starting this new section to talk more generally about the configuration questions you raised in the section above. The links and templates used in the Growth features are totally configurable! We pre-populated them using Wikidata, but it is easy to change any/all of them based on your guidance.

Speaking directly to your question, @Sdkb, we are actually undertaking an effort to make it possible for communities to modify these things on their own without our team's engineers. Here's the project page for how we're doing it, and we welcome everyone's thoughts on the talk page.

For now, there are some parts of the Growth features that communities can modify directly, and some that we need to do on our end.

• Growth team needs to do it
  • This includes help links in the "Get help with editing" module on the homepage, and the text and links in the help panel once you're on an article.
  • The easiest way to change these is to leave us a comment on this Phabricator task with what should be changed. You can also leave comments here on this talk page.
• Community can do it
  • This includes the templates used to identify which articles should be in the newcomer tasks feed (i.e. which need copyediting, links, references, etc.) and the help links that go along with those articles in the feed.
  • These are governed by the JSON config file here on wiki. If you have the appropriate role and are comfortable with editing the JSON, you can change that page and the features will update within a few minutes.
  • The important thing about this set of configurations is choosing the right templates for newcomer tasks. For instance, you can see that right now, there are nine templates listed for copyedit. In other words, any articles that have those templates can show up in the task feed for newcomers. We want to choose enough templates so that there are plenty of tasks even when users narrow to a specific topic (e.g. "Sports" or "Physics"). This special page shows how many tasks are available for each topic and task type. Right now, there are plenty of articles for all the task types except for "Add links between articles", which only has about 1,500. But we couldn't find additional templates that belonged in that group.
  • If you don't want to modify the JSON page, you can also leave comments here or on that Phabricator task and we can make the modifications.

How does this all sound? Does it make sense? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:36, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the background, MMiller. I'm not surprised linked has the fewest because it's already an easy task to get done. I'll leave it to @Sdkb to submit the changes for what is linked because I think he's got a better vision for it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:08, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Changes requested at the phab ticket. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:58, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I have the comments here about appropriate link targets. I think those need to be changed before this goes live. As for customisability, I think it's fine to do things that don't scale like hardcoding the values. Eventually it'd be nice to make it customisable but IMO I don't think it hurts to leave this for later.

On another note, at the top the user's email seems to be shown. I'm not quite sure why? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello @ProcrastinatingReader, we're actually working on allowing communities to change links easily as we talk , as part of making the features scalable. Once deployed to your wiki, there will be a community configuration special page that can be used to customize various aspects of the Growth features, including the links displayed in the help panel. You can find a project page about community configuration at MediaWiki.org, and I'm excited to hear what you think about it. You can leave any notes at the talk page. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 13:36, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader, regarding the email, we assume that most people know how to use an email. As a consequence, we encourage users to add their email so that they can get notifications, like when they are mentioned by other users on wiki. Communication with other users all happen on the wiki: we aren't creating a new messaging system based on emails. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:00, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): I get you might show a prompt asking a user to link their email if they don't have one linked, but since I have for a while it just seems a bit strange IMO to see "Email: [my email here] (change)" every time I visit the page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:10, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I understand your point. I also know from experience some people who forget to upgrade their email address on websites they are active on when they change it. This design element could be changed (it up to @MMiller (WMF) to consider it), but I'm a "better safe than sorry" person there. ;) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader -- I totally understand what you mean -- if the user's actions with respect to their email address are complete, why does it need to continue to take up space there? I've filed this Phabricator task so that we can talk it over on our team. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Similar issue with some of the other links. For example, the link for MediaWiki:growthexperiments-homepage-suggestededits-tasktype-learn-more, on the "Update articles" task, the link this goes to is Wikipedia:Pages needing attention which is marked historical. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:09, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

I picked pages listed by default on Wikidata for this task. If you know any better page to suggest, I'm all ears! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

To follow up on this section, we got good suggestions from Sdkb on the Phabricator task and updated the help links in the help panel. Please feel free to check them out and see if you recommend any other changes! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback after trying out tools on enwiki

I think this will be a great addition for newcomers. Referencing my own experience as a newcomer, I was unsure what to do when I first came here and who to ask for help. Some suggestions for improvement:

• Help panel --> General editing help --> How to write a "good article" leads to the MOS - surely there are other things to keep in mind to write a "good article"? (verifiability etc.) I note that these are covered in later links, but this is the first one in the menu and phrase used is rather broad. For a newcomer, it could also be a bit daunting when presented with a long manual like MOS on the click of "how to write an article" - in comparison to the more user-friendly tutorials we have for other links.
• Homepage --> Suggested edits --> Hard has a grayed out box: "create a new article" with reasoning as to why it isn't suitable for a newcomer. Is the box perpetually grayed out - if it is, it could confuse some users as to when they will be allowed to create articles directly in mainspace.

Overall I found the system user-friendly and helpful. Apologies if any of this has been brought up above :-) Pahunkat (talk) 08:58, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback Pahunkat.

As suggested in the discussion above, he link about "How to write a good article" will soon be changed to Help:Introduction to the Manual of Style/1. You comment is like a +1 in favor of this change! 👍

"Create a new article" checkbox is greyed out by default. Consider it as a placeholder, but this may change. At the moment, we encourage people to work on easier tasks, so that they can become more familiar with Wikipédia's processes and culture. But there is a link below the inactive checkbox that allows newcomers to directly create an article if they like to. It is phrased this way: "To successfully create a new article, you'll need to use many of the skills you can learn through completing some easier tasks. To learn more about how to create a new article, click here."

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:07, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Pahunkat -- thanks for trying out the features. I'm glad you think we're on the right track. One other thing to add to what @Trizek (WMF) said: we know that lots of newcomers come to the wiki intending to create a new article, but they don't realize how difficult it is. We expect that when they arrive on their homepage they are likely thinking, "Okay, where is the button to create a new article?" We actually want them to try easier tasks first, but we wanted a way to acknowledge that we understand they want to create a new article, and that's why we addressed it with the presence of the gray box. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback on the feature

After testing this feature for a bit, I find it very helpful! I just have one concern:

On all Wikipedia pages, the left-most tab is the page tab and the one to the right of that is the talk page. On the user's userpage, however, the homepage tab is the left-most tab. When I first noticed this, it felt a bit disorienting. If the tab could be the right-most tab or something, it would probably be more helpful.

Overall, this feature is great and I hope to see it develop even further in the future. --Aknell4 (talk • contribs) 22:26, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your appreciation, Aknell4. Can you explain a bit more why you think the tab that goes to the Homepage should be in a different order?

The resonating is the following for this new design: this is the only case where newcomers will see 3 tabs on the left side of their personal pages (Homepage, user page and user talk page), and most newcomers are true newcomers who aren't ware of the existence of the previous state, with the duet user page/user talk page.

Thanks! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply! I was thinking that on all pages other than their personal pages have the Page tab on the left side and the Talk tab to the right of that. I would think it confusing for someone to go into their userpage and find a homepage tab on the left and the Page tab to the right of that. I also thought it odd that it was called "homepage" and I initially thought it to mean the main page.

Hope this clarifies things. --Aknell4 (talk • contribs) 13:29, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, actually newcomers access their homepage by clicking on their username, at the top of any page. So the tab for the homepage is at the right place now. :D

We named the Homepage the homepage because the actual homepage for the wiki is called "Main page". As a consequence, we are using "homepage" since the very beginning of this project. But each community has the possibility to change this name.

Hope this clarifies things too! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Aknell4 -- thank you for trying out the features and thinking about them. I'm wondering what you think a stronger name for the page might be. I've learned that some communities have translated it to "Dashboard" or "Start page". MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): Thank you for replying to my suggestion! I would say that "Dashboard" is more descriptive of the homepage, as the homepage acts more like a dashboard. This would also alleviate the problem I addressed earlier about "Homepage" being mistaken for the Main Page. --Aknell4 (talk • contribs) 20:47, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Mobile help icon

I love that this is incorporated on the mobile version! My one nitpick however is that the icon is too large and obtrusive. It would be better if it were reduced to like 75% or 50% size, or if it could be like collapsed. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 04:08, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek, thank you for your feedback. You mean the help panel icon, the one you see you have when editing, or browsing help pages? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Ummm I'm not sure? It's a little blue circle with a question mark in it that shows up on most pages, regardless of whether I'm in the editor? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 16:17, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Can you share a screenshot please? :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

It's the help panel. Sungodtemple (talk) 17:39, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Clicking on it, it says Help panel I see now :) CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 17:51, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Screenshot of the Help Panel button, as seen on editing mode on mobile at English Wikipedia

@CaptainEek here is what I see. Do you have something similar? On my phone, the button is big enough to be taped. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes that's how it appears to me. But I think that's on the large size. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:56, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek -- thanks for bringing this up. It's definitely a challenge to design and build for the small mobile screen! I'll pass along your thoughts on the size of the button to our team's designer. Did you feel like it was covering up or blocking things you were trying to do? Or more that it was large and distracting? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Mentorship thoughts

So I just finished my first interaction with a mentee, and while it's only a sample size of one, I wanted to note down some initial thoughts.

Overall, the interaction went very well—the editor was seeking help with an article that had been draftified, and I was able to guide them to getting it back to mainspace and they seemed very appreciative. It's impossible to tell whether that's selection bias or a fluke or not, but it's a small positive sign, as many similar interactions at the Teahouse don't get to that outcome.

The main thing that stood out about the interaction to me was that it was solely two-party, compared to the environment at the Teahouse where we all collaborate to answer questions as a group. This certainly made me feel more invested in their situation and inclined to follow up on it, as I knew if I didn't help them out there was no one else who would step in. That has positive elements, but there are also downsides: if I hadn't been available, the response could've taken longer, and if I'd given bad advice, there would've been no one to catch me on it. I do think a situation sometimes happens at the Teahouse where someone asks a simple question and gets overwhelmed with a bunch of responses saying similar but slightly different things, so it may be helpful to have this model resulting in singular, more concise answers. Back to the downsides, the flipside of feeling investment in/a responsibility to the situation is that I think mentors may feel pressure to answer even when they don't feel like it, which could contribute over time to resentment for unpaid labor if mentors aren't adequately recognized (small tokens like Meta:Merchandise giveaways go a long way).

An aspect of the interaction that felt a little weird was that it took place on my talk page rather than the other editor's. I think it'd be better to have it take place at their page, as their own page is easier for them to find, and their question has more to do with them than it does with me. If the volume of questions was a lot higher, I could see potential mentors being discouraged from signing up because they don't want their talk page to become clogged up. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:34, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Great observations. Are there any plans to build a rate limit into things, i.e. at WP:NPPS we can indicated how many people we can help at once? I'm guessing the WMF team will have more to say but I like that the talk page messages are on the mentor's talk. One because the mentor is more likely to have talk page watchers so some sort of communal response may still be possible and two because this way there's no missing a notification for help. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:14, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why this would be a problem; most of the question threads so far only have about 3 or 4 messages. For the test deployment, mentors should be fine, as we already have ~10 mentors. Not sure about after test deployment. The best I can think of is making a wikipedia ad. Sungodtemple (talk) 12:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing these thoughts with us, @Sdkb.

To be honest, there is no perfect system regarding mentoring. We think there is one that works better, though. You highlighted most pros and cons regarding using a central place (like the Teahouse) or the mentor's talk page. An interaction with an individual is less complicated to apprehend for most new users, hence we privileged it. Don't forget that newbies are impressed by Wikipedia, so it is easier to contact someone that reaches at you directly and personally, than coming to a share page where you're not sure of being legitimate to post there.

The feeling of unpaid labor you mention is not something I heard about at other communities. I think mentoring is considered as a new way to get involved on Wikipedia. One would fix wikitext, an other would patrol recent changes, a third one will categorize. Mentoring is a new way to participate, it just needs to be recognized as such. For instance, at my home Wikipedia, mentoring is a great plus in your favor when you run for adminship.

Regarding the specific point of replying on your talk page, Barkeep49 gave two of the reasons why we encourage mentors to reply on their talk page (and ping newbies). The third one is that it will be very difficult to scale when you will have interecated with +100 users. Even if their activity may not be constant, it means a lot of noise in your watchlist. And I speak from experience there. :)

Marshall will soon share with you the schedule regarding the test. You could consider to have this call for volunteers when the test will be over, Sungodtemple. :)

Talk to you soon! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for writing down your thoughts on the mentorship interaction, @Sdkb. I'm glad your first mentor situation was so productive -- your proactive approach to working with the mentee is what we think can work really well. I will say, though, that I expect many mentor interactions to be less satisfying. For instance, it's common for a mentee to ask a question, the mentor to answer, and then to not hear back from the mentee (frequently because that mentee has already left the wiki).

You're picking up an important balance that we've considered: speed vs. personalization. If newcomers ask questions to a central place like a help desk or Teahouse, then they'll get an answer quicker, because there are many watchers. But if the question goes to a mentor, there is an opportunity to make a human connection that could be more comfortable and inspiring for the newcomer. When we first deployed the homepage in 2019, it had two options for asking questions: "ask your mentor" and "ask the help desk". The buttons were the exact same shape and size, but newcomers chose the mentor option about 10 times more frequently. This is what made the decision for us -- it seemed like newcomers felt more comfortable with mentors than with the help desk style situation.

It's an interesting idea about having the questions go on the mentee's talk page instead of the mentor's talk page. We put them on the mentor's talk page so that it's as simple as possible for the mentor to notice and answer them -- they don't have to go check some other place; it's already an inbox they expect to go through. But perhaps the questions could go to the mentee's page and automatically ping the mentor? I think a downside to that might be the weirdness (that Wikipedians are used to) of asking someone else a question on your page instead of their page. That might confuse newcomers.

I definitely like the idea of rewarding mentors. While mentors can always remove themselves from the list if they feel burned out, showing them their value is important. One small thing that happens on Arabic Wikipedia is that mentors can display a userbox. You can see it at the bottom of this user's page, with the Growth team's "W" logo.

@Barkeep49 -- about your idea of rate limiting, we've learned a bit about how the dynamics of mentoring tend to work. Newcomers are always flowing into the wiki, and they each get randomly assigned to a mentor. Then a small percentage of the newcomers ask a question, and small percentage of those continue to correspond with their mentor and ask questions. If we calibrate the number of mentors correctly, then even though newcomers are always flowing in, it lines up with the tail end of the previous newcomers tapering off their questions, and stays like a constant flow. Does that make sense? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts about the newcomer homepage

I viewed the newcomer homepage today and was very fond of it. Everything is easily laid out and easy to follow along with, and a mentor was readily available; I believe it'll be very helpful for newcomers and is definitely a step up from the Wikipedia:Community portal, which is very cluttered and confusing.

The page really puts Wikipedia in a good light, making it as friendly as possible and shows Wikipedia's true purpose. Info like "Your impact" and "Help make Wikipedia better" would definetely make a newcomer feel good, even if it was typo fixes.

One note, though, and I'm unsure on whether or not it's covered; the get help with editing section is resourceful on teaching about formatting, style, and the expansion of articles. I believe simple guideline pages should be just as readily available as this one. Often, I'll see a user on the Teahouse that has made a fleshed-out draft about something or someone that is not notable enough for inclusion. It's something that needs to be caught before newcomers learn the hard way. The page should show info about WP:NPOV, WP:N, WP:CON, WP:VD, and WP:NOT. When I began contributing, I was often working hard and then had my edits abruptly removed because I didnt now about WP:NFC or similar. Although there's a search bar, some might not search either because they don't know what sepcifically there looking for or they assume some silly rule doesn't exist in the first place. Panini!^🥪 14:20, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Definitely. We lose so many editors and waste so much labour time (on both reviewer and writer ends) by people not having a clue what our scope is, what our quality standards are and where we actually want help (usually by improving an existing article, not writing another one based on a defective cookie cutter). Sometimes I think that us long-term editors are just the ones who luckily stumbled across something where their first attempts at hard work just so happened to be useful (for me, notable episodes of The Big Bang Theory). — Bilorv (talk) 15:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)