Wikipedia talk:Growth (team)

Suggestion: Live Help link

Add "Live Help" to sidebar

I think getting quick live help might keep new editors engaged. We could try adding a link to #wikipedia-en-help on the MediaWiki:Sidebar and call it something like "Live Help". Add it right at the top, above the link to the main page so that it is highly visible. Maybe try some testing on some random pages with newly registered users. I'm not familiar enough to know how to do this technically so that only a specific set of new users would see it. Maybe somebody else could chime in on that. 64.40.54.49 (talk) 11:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Report Abuse link

Add "Report Abuse" to sidebar

Similar to the "Live Help" suggestion above. Add a "Repost Abuse" to the MediaWiki:Sidebar that links to an IRC channel staffed by a WMF employee. Many new users feel abused when they violate one of our many policies they don't know about and then get templated or reverted. If they could chat live with a friendly person, they could be taught in a friendly way what they did wrong and how to proceed. Again, this link would only be seen by a random set of newly registered users. 64.40.54.49 (talk) 11:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Unblock invalid rangeblocks

Have admins do a thorough review of their rangeblocks to see if they are still valid

• 3 years ago, NewYorkBrad asked about excessive rangeblocks at AN/I, when we were at 6.7 million blocked IPs.
• One year ago, I mentioned we had increased to 7 million blocked IPs.
• Today, we are well over 8 million blocked IPs and still climbing.

TL;DR

We have several problems with rangeblocks.

1. Rangeblocks are used too frequently
2. Rangeblocks are used inappropriately
3. Rangeblocks are forgotten

Frequent use: We use rangeblocks at the drop of a hat and without considering the collateral damage they cause. This was Brad's point when he brought the issue up at AN/I. Currently, at 8 million blocked IPs, even if only 1% are caught in the blocks, that's 80,000 people that can't edit. The true number is obviously much higher than that.

Inappropriate use for single editors: We often use rangeblocks to stop a single problematic editor and sacrificing everybody else that edits from that entire range. Rangeblocks should be a last resort and only used in a handful of situations and for the shortest possible time.

Inappropriate use for web hosts: Another improper use of rangeblocks is for hosting companies. Most web hosts have their entire range indeffed because they may host a proxy in the future.

1. We shouldn't be blocking for a problem that may happen in the future. Any IP or range could be blocked for that invalid reason.
2. IP address ranges are reassigned all the time, so indeffing is just plain wrong. I did a random check and about 20% of IP ranges had already been reassigned since being blocked.

Also, most web hosts that are rangeblocked are labeled a proxy even though they've never hosted a proxy. This is improper and should not be done. No range should rangeblocked until it has had consistently more problems than we are able to handle by normal means. We already have ProcseeBot (talk · contribs) which automatically finds and blocks proxies almost instantaneously. In addition, we have hundreds of volunteers participating in WP:OP, so there is no need to block entire ranges for some future problem that may or may not happen.

Forgotten rangeblocks: Many admins place rangeblocks and then completely forget them. Many times they leave the project with the rangeblocks left in place. When good-faith editors ask for an unblock, the reviewing admins see the invalid "proxy" label and search for any reason to deny the unblock request.

Example of the problem

I don't expect anybody to blindly accept what I've said here. So here is a real-life example from one year ago.

67.18.92.167 (talk · contribs) followed all our rules and asked to be unblocked. Three admins looked at the situation and the result was to decline the unblock. Why? Because of the invalid proxy label.

I then asked the original blocking admin and he unblocked the entire range. As one can see here, there have been no significant problems since the unblock. In fact, my quick review shows only positive contributions from that entire range and the range remains unblocked to this day.

Solution

Perhaps somebody from the WMF could review our rangeblock report and then contact all the blocking admins that have placed rangeblocks. Ask them do a thorough review of their rangeblocks and unblock all those that are not absolutely necessary, specifically stating that the blocking admins should show how Wikipedia was unable to handle the problems from the range in order to justify such a wide ranging block.

Also, rangeblocks should be capped at one year maximum. It's easy enough to set a rangeblock and only takes about 30 seconds. I don't think asking admins to spend 30 seconds per year is asking too much. This would alleviate the problems with many invalid rangeblocks especially when address ranges are reassigned. Thanks. 64.40.54.167 (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That is an enormously high number of blocked IPs. I agree a thorough review of rangeblocks is necessary. Maybe even a rangeblock amnesty for indefinite blocks? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 16:52, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Steven. Any review would be great. Amnesty for some of them would be good too, but certain ranges do need to be blocked—like anonymizer.com—becuase of the problems they cause with vandalism and WP:LTAs circumventing their blocks. The big problem is that they need to be reviewed because they change their address ranges periodically. Thanks for the reply. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:14, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: New Editor Advocates

Have new editors team up with experienced editors who will advocate for them.

I routinely come across this situation

• New editor has been editing and feeling that they've been generous in helping the project and hoping somebody will pat them on the back
• They violate some minor point of a guideline or policy
• They get templated and instead of getting the praise they were hoping for, they feel mistreated.
• They search for somebody to help them, hoping to find a Customer Service department where the customer is always right. A sympathetic ear, if you will.
• Instead, they find a number of other editors that side with the original templating editor and the new editor feels ganged up on and bullied.
• They leave in disgust, feeling mistreated.

Oh yeah... Well I'm gonna tell my big brother... and he'll get you. That's the basic idea, to be a big brother of a new editor. New editors want to feel supported and protected from the bullies of Wikipedia while they are coming up to speed.

It could work something like this.

• New editor gets templated.
• Advocate steps in and leaves a message for the templating editor that says, "This new editor should not have been templated. You should have politely helped them instead."
• Advocate helps the new editor understand why they were templated what they should do differently so it won't happen again.
• New editor now feels protected and is much more likely to return.

We could even go as far as telling the people who template others that they are free to ignore the advocates message and this is only to help with editor retention. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Twinkle mod

Disable the templating function in Twinkle for 1 week and see what happens

Twinkle allows for the rapid fire zapping of newbies like nothing else and there are a number of Wikipedians that play Twinkle like it's a first person shooter game. Removing the ability to zap new editors may help with their retention.

I know this idea won't be implemented, but I wanted to suggest it on behalf of all those who hate seeing new editors getting zapped. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Replace template messages

Quickly replace templates with a helpful note

Select a random group of new editors that have been templated. Quickly replace the template with a note saying, "It looks like you could use help with ____" so that the new editor never sees the original template message. This would require a bot in order to do the replacing quickly enough. This obviously wouldn't work on certain things like CSDs and vandalism reverts, so specific situations and templates would need to be defined. Follow this random group for one month and compare them with a similar group that received the normal templates. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Rate other users

Create a tool that allows people to rate a user from 0 to 10

This will certainly be controversial. Comment on edits not editors', that's what we say, but we violate that rule all the time. WP:WQA, WP:RFC/U, WP:ARBCOM and essentially every notice board are all about rating other users. We should allow people to rate other users WITHOUT using words, because words always end up enflaming the situation. Sure, this could be abused. People will make sockpuppets or have meat puppets help them rate, but that's not the point. The point is to allow people to vent without using words. It helps let off steam and diffuse a situation.

People only get a single vote as it were, but they can come back and change it any time. The tool could use a slider, or check boxes or radio buttons. We could have it show an average of all the ratings for a user or have it show nothing at all. But we should not show who has done a specific rating or what each specific rating is. If we decide to show an average, then users should start off with a single rating of ten issued by "the system" so that they don't start at zero. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 04:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Ask for new editors

Post a banner, like the fund drives, but ask for editors instead of donations.

In general, people don't like banner ads, so this should be a text only notice. Place it at the top of pages and ask new editors to join. It could say; ""We are looking for new editors. We need your help. Click here." Have a link that points to the Teahouse or a sub-section of it. There we could help users register an account and set up a user page. We could teach them the basics of editing and let them know about our notability and verification policies. We could have their new user page include a link back to the Teahouse in case they need more help or have further questions. We could also teach them how to use talk pages and sign their posts. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 04:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Post editor loss updates

Post a graph each month of where we are and where we should be showing how well we are doing with editor loss

Editor loss is controlled much more by the Wikipedian community than it is by the WMF. We need to keep the community informed about how well we are doing. The WMF set a goal of 150,000 active editors by 2015. We need a graph of showing editors over the last year and showing where we should be, something like strategy:File:Wikimedia Participation Goal.png. We should also present the raw numbers, perhaps something like this.

• Where we should be this month: # of editors
• Where we currently are this month: # of editors
• We are behind the goal by x number of editors
• The trend over the last year has been going: up/down/unchanged

Two years ago, the enwp community didn't care about editor loss. A year ago, a measurable but small percentage was concerned about losing editors. Today, more and more people in the community talk about editor loss. We need to keep the community informed and up-to-date on the editor loss situation. I'd suggest Maggie (or somebody) post a summary each month at WP:VPM with a link to a more detailed report at the WMF blog or whereever. I'd also let the staff at the Signpost know in case they want to report on it each month. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 05:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Create a workspace area for new users

Create a section of Wikipedia that is safe for new editors

This idea has been titled Workspace editing as detailed here and is a possible future phase of NPT. This really isn't a quick and easy experiment, but I think it would have the biggest impact on editor retention of any possible idea as it brings Wikipedia back to its fundamentals of why it has been a sucessful project.

Workspace editing values a user's contributions, which is what new editors desire more than anything else. People don't want to volunteer if they feel their efforts are valueless and thrown away. They want to feel they've contributed something of worth that other people may find useful. That is the main reason good-faith editors contribute, because they feel they are contributing something that has value. This can be seen in the remarks made by several people in this report. There are many other benefits of Workspace editing that I might detail later. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 05:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Referencing tool

Create a referencing tool for articles

Create a tool to find and properly format references. The basic idea is to have a searchbox to search for references. Once a reference is found, the tool would bring up a fill-in-the-blank type form that an editor could fill out. A "Save" button would format the citation and add it to the article.

TL;DR

We have lots and lots of automated tools that help us to stop bad people from contributing. We have very few tools that help good-faith editors to make helpful contributions. That seems backwards if we want to encourage new users.

Many new editors are discouraged when their articles are deleted. Most deletions happen because articles don't have references to show notability. Creating a tool to help with referencing may help solve part of this problem.

It's possible that a very basic tool could be implemented quickly. The tool could build on the {{find}} template and have searches of newspapers and books using Google and/or Yahoo. A more advanced tool could add several automated features such as automatically filling in fields. Perhaps it could use code from WP:REFLINKS and Citation bot (talk · contribs) if the authors were willing to donate their code. The tool could format the references to WP:LDR to make it easier for new users to edit the articles.

A much more advanced version could allow an editor to click a citation and drag it to a sentence, which would add the citation's ref name link to that sentence. This would make it much easier for a new editor to show an article's notability, thus making it less likely to be deleted. The tool would also allow experienced editors to improve existing articles by adding more and/or better citations. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 06:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Good vs Good-faith

Re-educate the community about users that are attempting to do good and how that group of new editors can help us

Have Maggie repeatedly remind the community that only editors actively trying to harm the project should be treated accordingly. And that users making mistakes are still good-faith users and should be helped and treated with respect and courtesy.

TL;DR

The Wikipedian community has become more exclusive than inclusive—because of its focus on quality—and is failing to bring in the experts that it wants help from to achieve that quality.

This study classifies new users in to four broad categories; Vandal, Bad-faith, Good-faith and Golden. The community classifies those same groups quite differently.

Report defined	Vandal	Bad-faith	Good-faith	Golden
Community defined	Vandal	Bad-faith	Worthless	Good (i.e. Good-faith)

When the community thinks about good-faith editors, they think of editors that are able to produce good results on their first edit. This is very different from an editor that is attempting to produce good results on their first edit. The community no longer understands that an editor attempting to do good—but failing—is still a good-faith editor.

They label good-faith editors as worthless and not desired by the community and they treat them the same way the treat bad-faith users and vandals. In essence, they have moved the goal post and created a new and unintended barrier to entry. That makes us less inclusive and drives our numbers down. This conversation is an example of that that mindset. Some of the comments left at this report are another blatant example.

We don't know if a new user making a mistake is a youthful editor or a seasoned professor at a distinguished university. We treat them all as undesirables. We should re-educate the community about what a good-faith editor is. We should help these good-faith editors learn from their mistakes and get past them so they can succeed at being productive members of the community

Side note: One of the best decisions the WMF has ever made was to bring Moonriddengirl on board as Community Liaison. Maggie has the respect of the community because of her many years of dedicated service to CCI. She is calm and patient and knows how to interact with the community in a very productive manner.

This is a task that only Maggie can accomplish, in my opinion. The community has become indifferent and even actively hostile towards helpful information coming from the WMF. A very sad situation that reflects poorly on the community, But that is not true in Maggie's case.

Maggie could remind the community of the difference between good-faith users and bad-faith users and that we can grow good-faith editors in to great editors. Perhaps she could leave periodic notes at WP:VPM or, if she's up to it, write a series of short articles for the Signpost using data and reports the WMF has been publishing. I hate adding to her workload, which is tremendous, as are all the workloads for WMF staff, but I think she's the only one that could accomplish this task. 64.40.54.43 (talk) 16:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC)