|
This is Ed Erhart (WMF)'s talk page, where you can send messages and comments to Ed Erhart (WMF). |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||
| Archives: 1 | |||
Growth team newsletter #17Edit
Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasksEdit
Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Moving forward: more wikis to get the featuresEdit
Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
Variant testingEdit
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
News for mentorsEdit
Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: February 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: March 2021Edit
| This Month in Education
Volume 10 • Issue 3 • March 2021 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issuse
|
This Month in GLAM: March 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: April 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: April 2021Edit
| ||||||
Growth Newsletter #18Edit
Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasksEdit
"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
News for mentorsEdit
- We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
- We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.
Community configurationEdit
We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
ScalingEdit
- Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
- A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
- After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
This Month in Education: May 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: May 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: June 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: June 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: July 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: July 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in GLAM: July 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: August 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: August 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: September 2021Edit
| This Month in Education
Volume 10 • Issue 9 • September 2021 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue |
This Month in GLAM: September 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: October 2021Edit
| This Month in Education
Volume 10 • Issue 10 • October 2021 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue
|
Growth Newsletter #19Edit
Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasksEdit
- "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
- "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.
News for mentorsEdit
- The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [1]
- At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [2]
Community configurationEdit
- Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.
ScalingEdit
- We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [3]
- The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [4][5]
- A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
- Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.
News for communitiesEdit
- Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
- The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
- Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
- Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: October 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: November 2021Edit
This Month in Education: November 2021Edit
This Month in GLAM: November 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in GLAM: December 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in GLAM: December 2021Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: January 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 1 • January 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
In This Issue
- 30-h Wikipedia Article Writing Challenge
- Announcing Wiki Workshop 2022
- Final exhibition about Cieszyn Silesia region
- Join us this February for the EduWiki Week
- Offline Education project WikiChallenge closed its third edition
- Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom ToT Experience of a Filipina Wikimedian
- Welcoming new trainers of the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program
- Wikimedia Israel’s education program: Students enrich Hebrew Wiktionary with Biblical expressions still in use in modern Hebrew
This Month in GLAM: January 2022Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: February 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 2 • February 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
- Open Foundation West Africa Expands Open Movement With UHAS
- Celebrating the 18th anniversary of Ukrainian Wikipedia
- Integrating Wikipedia in the academic curriculum in a university in Mexico
- Results of "Reading Wikipedia" workshop in the summer school of Plan Ceibal in Uruguay
- WikiFundi, offline editing plateform : last release notes and how-tos
- Writing Wikipedia as an academic assignment in STEM fields
- The Learning and Connection – 1Lib1Ref with African Librarians
This Month in GLAM: February 2022Edit
| ||||||
Growth Newsletter #20Edit
Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Suggested editsEdit
As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.
Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.
Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.
"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.
Positive reinforcementEdit
Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:
- Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
- Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
- Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.
This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
News for mentorsEdit
- The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
- The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
- We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
- Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
- We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.
Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!
ScalingEdit
Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.
How to helpEdit
Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.
Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
This Month in Education: March 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 3 • March 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
In This Issue
- Arte+Feminismo Pilipinas:Advocacy on Women Empowerment
- The edit-a-thon on Serbian Wikipedia on the occasion of Edu Wiki Week
- Call for Participation: Higher Education Survey
- Collection of Good Practices in Wikipedia Education
- Conversation: Open education in the Wikimedia Movement views from Latin America
- EduWiki Week 2022, celebrations and learnings
- EduWiki Week in Armenia
- Open Education Week at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
- Wikipedia + Education Talk With Leonard Hagan
- Wikimedia Israel cooperates with Yad Vashem in developing a training course for teachers
This Month in GLAM: March 2022Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: April 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 4 • April 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
In This Issue
- Audio-Educational Seminar of Wikimedia Mexico
- Dagbani Wikimedians using digital TV broadcast to train Wikipedia contributors in Ghana
- Digital Education & The Open Space With Herbert Acheampong
- HerStory walks as a part of edit-a-thons
- Join us for Wiki Workshop 2022
- The youngest member of Tartu Wikiclub is 15-year-old student
This Month in GLAM: April 2022Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: May 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 5 • May 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
In This Issue
- Wiki Hackathon in Kwara State
- Introduction of the Wikimedia Fan Club to Kwara State University Malete
- Education in Kosovo
- Bringing the Wikiprojects to the Island of Catanduanes
- Tyap Wikipedia Goes Live
- Spring 1Lib1Ref edition in Poland
- Tyap Editors Host Maiden Wiktionary In-person Training Workshop
- Wikibooks project in teaching
- Africa Eduwiki Network Hosted Conversation about Wikimedian in Education with Nebojša Ratković
- My Journey In The Wiki-Space By Thomas Baah
This Month in Education: May 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 5 • May 2022
Contents • Headlines • Subscribe
In This Issue
- Wiki Hackathon in Kwara State
- Introduction of the Wikimedia Fan Club to Kwara State University Malete
- Education in Kosovo
- Bringing the Wikiprojects to the Island of Catanduanes
- Tyap Wikipedia Goes Live
- Spring 1Lib1Ref edition in Poland
- Tyap Editors Host Maiden Wiktionary In-person Training Workshop
- Wikibooks project in teaching
- Africa Eduwiki Network Hosted Conversation about Wikimedian in Education with Nebojša Ratković
- My Journey In The Wiki-Space By Thomas Baah
This Month in GLAM: May 2022Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: June 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 6 • June 2022
- Black Lunch Table: Black History Month with Igbo Wikimedians User Group
- Bolivian Teachers Welcomed Wikipedia in their Classroom
- Educational program & Wikivoyage in Ukrainian University
- The Great Learning and Connection: Experience from AFLIA
- New Mexico Students Join Wikimedia Movement Through WikiForHumanRights Campaign
- The school wiki-project run by a 15 year old student came to an end
- The students of Kadir Has University, Istanbul contribute Wikimedia projects in "Civic Responsibility Project" course
- Wiki Trip with Vasil Kamami Wikiclub to Berat, the town of one thousand windows
- Wikiclubs in Albania
- Wikidata in the classroom FGGC Bwari Experience
- Wikipedia and Secondary Schools in Aotearoa New Zealand
- А large-scale online course for teaching beginners to work in Wikipedia has been developed in Russia
Growth team newsletter #21Edit
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcementEdit
- The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
- We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
- We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
- The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
- Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.
For mentorsEdit
- We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
ScalingEdit
- "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
- "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [6]
Suggested editsEdit
- Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
- Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
- Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
- User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
- Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [7]
- Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.
Community configurationEdit
Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [8]
- Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [9]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: June 2022Edit
| ||||||
This Month in Education: July 2022Edit
This Month in Education
Volume 11 • Issue 7 • July 2022
This Month in GLAM: July 2022Edit
| ||||||