Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Product & Technology/OKRs/WE1.2

Wiki Experiences 1.2: Complete improvements to four workflows that improve the experience of editors with extended rights (admins, patrollers, functionaries, and moderators of all kinds); extend their creativity; impact at least four different wikis, and meet KRs for each improvement set collaboratively with the volunteers.

This KR aims to support 'moderators' - the most experienced users across Wikimedia projects, who are typically users with extended rights, such as administrators, patrollers, CheckUsers, Oversighters, and Stewards. These user groups have a broad array of processes and needs, which vary from project to project. As such, a number of Wikimedia Foundation teams are contributing towards this goal.

A screenshot showing Edit Check prompting someone to add a reference to a new paragraph they added to an en.wiki article.
Edit Check in production (en.wiki)

In recent years the Wikimedia Foundation has focused its efforts on new users and new content growth. This has had the unfortunate side effect of increasing the workload on moderators - more content is being created by more users. Because of this, and in response to requests and frustrations heard across Wikimedia communities, we want to focus our efforts on supporting those moderators. We want to do this in a way which "extends their creativity", by which we mean we don't want to create constrained, inflexible tools, but rather make changes which enable moderators to be creative and feel ownership over. We want to impact multiple Wikimedia projects, not just one, and want to set the goals and key metrics for this projects collaboratively with interested community members.

A screenshot showing the patrolling on Android prototype. An edit is being reviewed and the user can choose from multiple interactions.
Prototype for patrolling on Android

As a broad initiative which we hope will be beneficial to medium and large Wikipedia projects by taking on some of the patrolling workload, Automoderator will provide communities with automated anti-vandalism tooling. To stem the number of edits requiring review by patrollers, Edit check will guide newer editors into making contributions which adhere to community guidelines and policies. Both Automoderator and Edit check will provide communities with configurable options for local setup via Community Configuration 2.0; functionality which any future community or WMF tooling will be able to use to easily configure software. Providing support to moderators contributing from mobile devices is also important to us, so the Patrolling on Android project will build patroller tools natively in the Android app. We also want to ensure that Wikimedia Commons receives specific support, through the Upload Wizard improvements project, which aims to improve the quality of new uploads to reduce the volume of deletion requests required.

Below you can find a list of the five projects (and teams) which are contributing to this Key Result. Each has a project page where you can learn more about the initiative and engage in discussions with the team. If you are interested in discussing the projects below please check out their project pages or reach out to the hypothesis owner! Alternatively, feel free to post on this talk page.

Work streams

Team name Project Hypothesis owner Hypothesis Target metrics
Moderator Tools Automoderator Sam Walton If we enable communities to automatically prevent or revert obvious vandalism, moderators will have more time to spend on other activities.
  • Automoderator has a baseline accuracy of 90%
  • Moderator editing activity increases by 10% in non-patrolling workflows
  • Automoderator is enabled on two Wikimedia projects by the end of FY23/24.
  • 5% of patrollers engage with Automoderator tools and processes on projects where it is enabled.
  • 90% of false positive reports receive a response or action from another editor.

Feedback welcome on the above metrics and the rest of our measurement plan.

Editing Edit check Peter Pelberg If we build Edit Check (a two-sided system that help both newcomers and Junior contributors improve their edits while also supporting moderators), moderators at the English and French Wikipedias will be able to more easily keep up with moderation work, be empowered to configure how the system represents policies to contributors, and see improved edits from newcomers. Metrics being finalized; see draft: mw:Edit check#Evaluating impact
Android Patrolling on Android Jazmin Tanner If we build Patroller Tasks in apps this will increase moderators ability to respond to vandalism on the go across several language wikis, in service of WE1.2. We will also be able to provide feedback to the ORES API in partnership with the research team, which is relied on by volunteer developers. Based on our existing research we would start with edits users see in recent feeds and enable rollback, warnings, and positive encouragement.
  • 65% of Target mature audiences that use the tool say they find it helpful for maintaining the quality of wikis and would recommend it to other patrollers
  • Edits made by mature audiences increase by 5%
  • 10% of target mature audiences engage with filter for preferences
  • 65% of Target mature audiences engage with the tool at least three times in a thirty day window
Growth Community Configuration 2.0 Kirsten Stoller If editors with extended rights can transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality for all users, communities will have control over how features function on their wikis, and WMF teams will be able to ship new functionality quickly.
  • By the end of March 2024, configurable Growth features will utilize Community Configuration 2.0.
  • By the end of June 2024, at least one other WMF team in Product and Technology has either launched or is in the active development stage for a project that is using Community Configuration 2.0.
  • By the end of the fiscal year, Community Configuration 2.0 has been used to customize at least 20 wikis. In other words, editors with extended rights are aware and utilize Community Configuration 2.0.
  • By the end of the fiscal year, initial guidelines for the types of functionality that should and should not be in Community Configuration, and types of user rights, will be agreed in consultation and collaboration with volunteers and interested product teams.
Structured Content Upload Wizard improvements Alexandra Ugolnikova If we make improvements to the Commons upload wizard that minimize one of the most common problems that cause future deletion requests, we will decrease moderator burden. One improvement will be to encourage users to select the right option when uploading not their “own work”. We will identify other improvements and measurable goals based on an analysis of a sample of 1000 deletion requests. Qualitative feedback from users, user testing of upload process improvements. Monitor ratio of newly uploaded media through Upload Wizard that become deletion requests.