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REMINDER/invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, Wednesday, June 29 at 6 p.m.[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco tonight!

If you cannot join in person or want to view portions later:

We will have:

Light snacks, and time to mingle
A brief report on the Pride edit-a-thon recently held at the San Francisco Public Library, that was coordinated by Wiki editor Merrilee
A special announcement (secret for now but come and find out more!)
Join in on a brief in person Wikidojo!
Announcements and impromptu topics are welcome, too!

Please register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cjLRrSTlEkGOPTQ-h6A0WvSFI4ZmIUl6jEHp_RYas-E/viewform and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict.

For further details, see: Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2016

See you tonight! Pete F, Ben, Stephen and MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:48, 29 June 2016 (UTC) | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice)[reply]

Late breaking invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, July 27 (Wednesday) - change of venue - tonight[edit]

Please join us in the Mission at Noisebridge (one time change of venue)!

We hope you can join us today, Wednesday, from 6 p.m. on, at our July Bay Area WikiSalon. This month only, we are going to be at Noisebridge, a hackerspace/makerspace 1.5 blocks from the 16th & Mission BART station (see the link for directions). Some of us will be working on the Wikipedia article on basic income. All info here. Some good news - we do not have to be as strict about advance RSVP at Noisebridge, so bring spontaneous guests! (Registering ahead of time is still helpful, as always, as it will help us plan ahead.)

Come and hang out, have some light snacks. Wi-Fi is available, so please bring your editing device if you plan to edit.

Also, Pete just published a writeup of the Wikidojo exercise we did last month. Your comments welcome, if he missed anything! http://wikistrategies.net/ghost-town-royals-wikidojo

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas. Mark you calendars now.

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend.

See you soon! Pete F, Ben Creasy, Stephen and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, an open access peer reviewed journal with no charges, invites you to participate.[edit]

Did you know about Wikiversity Journal of Medicine? It is an open access, peer reviewed medical journal, with no publication charges. We welcome you to have a look. Feel free to participate.

You can participate in any one or more of the following ways:

Publish an article to the journal.
Sign up as a peer reviewer of potential upcoming articles. If you do not have expertise in these subjects, you can help in finding peer reviewers for current submissions.
Sign up as an editor, and help out in open tasks.
Outreach to potential contributors, with can include (but is not limited to) scholars and health professionals. In any mention of Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, there may be a reference to this Contribute-page. Example presentation about the journal.
Add a post-publication review of an existing publication. If errors are found, there are guidelines for editing published works.
Apply to become the treasurer of the journal
Join the editorial board.
Share your ideas of what the journal would be like in the future as separate Wikimedia project.
Donate to Wikimedia Foundation.
Translate journal pages into other languages. Wikiversity currently exists in the following other languages
- Ceština, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, 한국어, Português, Slovenšcina, Suomi, Svenska, Ελληνικά, Русский, العربية, 日本語
Sign up to get emails related to the journal, which are sent to updateswijoumed.org. If you want to receive these emails too, state your interest at the talk page, or contact the Editor-in-chief at haggstrom.mikaelwikiversityjournal.org.
Spread the word to anyone who could be interested or could benefit from it.

The future of this journal as a separate Wikimedia project is under discussion and the name can be changed suitably. Currently a voting for the same is underway. Please cast your vote in the name you find most suitable. We would be glad to receive further suggestions from you. It is also acceptable to mention your votes in the wide-reachwikiversityjournal.org email list. Please note that the voting closes on 16th August, 2016, unless protracted by consensus, due to any reason.

-from Diptanshu.D (talk · contribs · count) and others of the Editorial Board, Wikiversity Journal of Medicine.

Diptanshu^Talk 09:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gender by language updates[edit]

Hi Max. I look at your WHGI Gender by language page every Monday to review progress over the previous week but there once again seems to be a bug as it hasn't updated this time. I don't know if it's your routines or Wikidata. Perhaps you could check things out.--Ipigott (talk) 16:31, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: thank you very much for the bug report. I'll check into it now. The crux of it usually is that I rely on Markus Krötzsch's Wikidata Toolkit, which is still in active development, and Wikidata itself still has breaking changes once and a while. Also I wanted to say I saw how @The Earwig: has created a tool quite similar to record metrics for Women in Red. I feel like our tools compliment each other. Earwig's excels in being designed for Women in Red, and does extra category munging. On the other hand it's English only, and so can't give perspective on how Women's biographies are increasing in relation to all English biographies, or to other languages. I'd hope some how we could merge them. It's a very guilty point in my to-do list that I haven't put together a full longitudinal view for WiR so changes can be seen over month-over-month, or year-over-year, only week after week. WHGI actually stores all the necessary data at the moment, just doesn't display it. Which is a grand shame since it would only require just a few hours extra work to put together. I really would hope to do this soon. (Sigh, PhD life!). I guess it would sufficient even now report all the yearly changes in text, without necessarily visualizing it (although that's not even too hard). Long term though I would like to find a collaborator from the community that could maintain the WHGI with me, so that I was not the single point of failure. Maximilianklein (talk)

Thanks for your explanations, Max. You are absolutely right about The Earwig's work but like you, I think it is useful to have comparative data on the other languages too. I hope Krötzsch is able to fix the bug in his toolkit soon so that we can monitor future developments. While WiR is currently principally concerned with the EN Wikipedia, Rosiestep and several others have shown interest in extending the remit to other languages. It would therefore be useful is you could join forces with Harej and his Project X team in order to work towards more comprehensive coverage. In any case, I hope you will be able to find time to look into the existing problem as it would be great to have results for the rest of August. Good luck with your Ph.D.--Ipigott (talk) 08:36, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good morning, Max and The Earwig; thanks for what you do. The weekly English languages updates are important, but broader brush strokes across more languages and over extended periods are as well. I'm preparing a presentation for WikiConference North America (7-10 October; San Diego, California) and will include some basics of your work if we can collaborate on that. Please ping me off-list, and again, thank you. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:55, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@The Earwig, Rosiestep, and Harej: Hi Max. I really think it is a great pity that your Gender by Language analysis has not being updated since 7 August, apparently as a result of modifications to the Wiidata Toolkit which you say is maintained by Markus Krötzsch. The data presented are extremely important to the Women in Red project as they indicate progress on the number of women's biographies as a proportion of all the biographies on Wikipedia, not only for English but for all the major Wikipedia languages. Is there any chance that those of you who are familiar with Wikidata could get together and solve the problem? The last time we had an incident like this, there were no updates for several months. I realize many of you are tied up with other things but maybe you could devote a little bit of you time to this over the next week or two. Not only is it important for Rosie's talks, but for all of us who are enhancing women's coverage on Wikipedia and Wikidata.--Ipigott (talk) 16:10, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: Sorry I was on Summer holiday. I am working on a fix as I write. I estimate a solution soon, and I will ping you when it's solved. Maximilianklein (talk) 19:29, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: I believe I have fixed WHGI for the moment. Please ping me again if it goes down in the future. Maximilianklein (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for you efforts. The latest stats show good progress for many of the major languages, including English.--Ipigott (talk) 07:38, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Max. Just thought I should let you know there was no update this week.--Ipigott (talk) 07:45, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: Ok, I will look into it again. Maximilianklein (talk) 20:18, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Fine again now.--Ipigott (talk) 19:17, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, Wednesday, August 31[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Hi folks,

We would like to invite you to this month's Bay Area WikiSalon. The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We make sure to allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages and light snacks. We will also have a brief presentation for your education and possible enjoyment:

Former EFF intern Marta Belcher will discuss crowdsourcing her Stanford Law School graduation speech using a wiki. The "WikiSpeech" was the subject of prominent national media attention in 2015, and more than half of her classmates contributed to writing and editing the commencement address via a wiki.

Please note: You should register here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. The building policy is strict on the I.D. part. This also helps us figure out how much food and drink to bring in! Feel free to stop by even if only to say a quick hello, but you might have to give us a last minute call if you forget to RSVP. Also, don't be shy about hitting us up if you have thoughts on speakers or wiki-related activities.

For further details, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, August 2016

See you soon! Pete F, Ben, Stephen and Checkingfax | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:05, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tonight: Live and archived links for Bay Area WikiSalon[edit]

Bay Area WikiSalon, Wednesday, August 31:

If you cannot join us in person tonight, we are streaming (and later archiving) the presentation by former EFF intern Marta Belcher. We expect her to be live starting between 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. PDT and talking and taking questions for about 30 minutes thereafter.

Here is the YouTube stream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t8V79s2-og
Here is the link to join the Hangout on Air: https://hangouts.google.com/call/ezrol7dafjfwxfh2ilpkjyxoaue

You can search for it on the Commons and YouTube later too.

Wayne, Pete, Ben, and Stephen

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:50, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to the Bay Area WikiSalon series, Wednesday, September 28[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Hi folks,

We would like to invite you to this month's Bay Area WikiSalon. The last Wednesday evening of every month, Wikipedia and Wikimedia enthusiasts gather to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We will have no formal agenda to allow people to freely share ideas and perhaps learn about Wikipedia through hands-on editing. Co-organizer Ben Creasy will be looking at election-related articles to enhance the information available in the upcoming November elections.

Co-organizer Stephen LaPorte has suggested doing an upload-a-thon for Wiki Loves Monuments. Niki, the California coordinator for WLM will be in attendance. WLM is an annual event and the official dealine is Friday the 30th for submissions to count towards awards.

Or, you can grab a couch, a booth, or a stool and do your own thing.

For further details, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, September 2016. Mark your calendars now for the 3rd Wednesday in October, the 26th, when we will have a brief presentation.

See you soon! Pete F, Ben, Stephen and Checkingfax | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:35, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are invited to a Wednesday evening event in SF[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Hi folks,

Please copy and share this on other talk pages. We would like to invite you to this month's Bay Area WikiSalon. The last Wednesday evening of every month, Wikipedia and Wikimedia enthusiasts gather at the Wikimedia Foundation lounge to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We will have no meaty agenda this month, but we will allow a brief period for:

Open mic for anybody who attended WikiConference North America 2016 in San Diego last week and wants to share their takeaway
Question & answer
Open mic for announcements
Maybe a focus on some topical election article editing with Ben?

Or, you can grab a couch, a booth, a stool or counter and do your own thing.

For further details, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, October 2016.

PS: Mark your calendars ahead now for the 3rd Wednesday in November, the 30th (the week after Thanksgiving), at 6 p.m. when our WikiSalon will host a super awesome top secret mystery guest mingling in our midst. We will announce specifics at the upcoming WikiSalon.

See you soon! Pete F, Ben, Stephen, Jacob, and Checkingfax | (Subscribe or Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary[edit]

Four years ago ...
countering bias

... you were recipient no. 300 of Precious, a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:37, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Five years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:31, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

... and six --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

... and seven --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:08, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody is invited to the November 30 Bay Area WikiSalon[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Details and RSVP here.

See you soon! Pete F, Ben Creasy, and Checkingfax | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bay Area WikiSalon series: Everybody is invited this Wednesday evening at 6[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki and open-source enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

Before and after the brief presentation we allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages and light snacks.

In addition, this month we will have:

a brief presentation from User:Cullen328 (Jim Heaphy) about the Wikipedia Teahouse
spontaneous lightning talks from the floor
community announcements from the floor

For details and to RSVP see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, December 2016

See you soon! Ben Creasy and Checkingfax | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

+++++
P.S. Any help spreading the word through social media or other avenues is most welcome! We plan to announce this on various sites and invite various groups; if you would like to join in, check our meta planning page, and please note any announcements you are sending out: meta:Monthly WikiSalon in San Francisco#Announcements and promotion

Please feel free to add to, refine, reorganize or edit the above linked page: it is a wiki!

We need more helpers and organizers, so if you see a need, please jump in, or talk to us about it! You can add your username to the meta page where appropriate, or create a new role!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder invitation to the December Bay Area WikiSalon[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Hi, everybody.

We are excited to remind you of the ninth in the Bay Area WikiSalon series that is coming up this Wednesday evening at 6 p.m.

Details (RSVP suggested) here (RSVP helps us know how much food and drink to bring in)

What is a WikiSalon? A monthly safe and inclusive meatspace event conducted in organized chaos and we all clean up the mess afterwards. Livestream links for the presentation are available during presentation months, and will be forthcoming for those of you that cannot attend. December is a presentation month.

Hope to see you there! Wayne (and Ben) - co-organizers
Any last minute questions or suggestions? Please ping or email Ben or me. | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Festive greetings![edit]

A barnstar of deep recognition for all your efforts on Women in Red throughout the year. Enjoy the end of year festivities and prepare to put more women on the world map in 2017. --Ipigott (talk) 08:55, 21 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Ipigott: Maximilianklein (talk) 17:20, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Archived link for December Bay Area WikiSalon[edit]

Hi, y'all. In case you missed it and want to watch the archive reel; the topic was The Wikipedia Teahouse and the presenter was well respected Wikimedian Jim Heaphy [[User:Cullen328]]

Archive link (also includes intro, announcements, and a lightning talk)

Details about Bay Area WikiSalon for December here

The full title of Jim's presentation was: Welcoming and Helping New Editors: A Month at the Wikipedia Teahouse: an overview of the Teahouse and an analysis of over 300 Teahouse conversations during the month of August, 2016

Jim gave a longer version of this presentation in October at WikiConference North America 2016 in San Diego, California.

Cheers! Co-organizer Checkingfax - and co-organizer Ben Creasy | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

PS: Mark your calendars now for Sunday, January 15 at 2 p.m. which will be Wikipedia's 16th Birthday party hosted by Bay Area WikiSalon! Details to follow soon. If you want to help plan it, get in touch with us ASAP!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are invited to a birthday bash to Celebrate Wikipedia's 16th Birthday![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Wikipedia Day 16 SF is a fun Birthday bash and edit-a-thon on Sunday, January 15, 2017, hosted by Bay Area WikiSalon at the Wikimedia Foundation's Chip Deubner Lounge in the South of Market Street business district.

For details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Meetup/SF/Wikipedia Day 2017

The San Francisco gathering is one of a number of Wikipedia Day celebrations worldwide.

See you soon! Ben Creasy, Checkingfax and Slaporte | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this notice)

PS: We need volunteers to help make this a fun and worthwhile event. Please add your name to the Project page, and what you can offer. It is a wiki, so please make direct edits to the page.

Bay Area WikiSalon usually meets the last Wednesday evening of every month as an inclusive and safe place to collaborate, mingle, munch and learn about new projects and ideas.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:52, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder invitation to the Wikipedia Day 16 birthday bash & edit-a-thon[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Wikipedia Day 16 SF is a fun Birthday bash and edit-a-thon on Sunday, January 15, 2017, hosted by Bay Area WikiSalon at the Wikimedia Foundation's Chip Deubner Lounge in the South of Market Street business district and everybody is invited!

Details and RSVP here

See you Sunday! Ben Creasy, Checkingfax and Slaporte

PS: We still need more volunteers to help make this a fun and worthwhile event. Please add what you can offer and your name to the Project page or Talk about it. It is a wiki, so please make direct edits to the Project page. The event is already growing due to volunteers that have stepped up so far.

Bay Area WikiSalon meets one evening of every month as an inclusive and safe place to collaborate, mingle, munch or learn about new projects and ideas.

Note: the previous invitation had a bum wikilink. Sorry! | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this notice) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:43, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bay Area WikiSalon invitation for February 22[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

Please note: You should RSVP here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. This also helps us figure out how much food and drink to bring in.

For further details, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, February 2017

See you soon! Ben Creasy and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:47, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bay Area WikiSalon February reminder[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 6 p.m.

For details and to RSVP: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, February 2017

See you soon! Ben Creasy and Wayne (co-coordinators) | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:58, 21 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your invitation: Bay Area WikiSalon series at Noisebridge[edit]

Please join us in San Francisco!

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas. This month we are meeting at Noisebridge makerspace/hackerspace in the Mission near 16th Street BART (temporary change of venue). The good news is this means that you can bring spontaneous guests if you forget to RSVP!

If possible, please RSVP as it helps us figure out how much food and drink to bring in. For further details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, March 2017

See you soon! Co-coordinators Ben Creasy and Wayne
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:06, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder: Tonight is Bay Area WikiSalon at Noisebridge[edit]

Please join us in San Francisco!

Details and to RSVP: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, March 2017 (optional, but helpful for food and special needs accommodations)

We are meeting at Noisebridge makerspace/hackerspace (temporary venue change) near 16th ST BART in SF.

See you soon! Co-coordinators Ben Creasy and Wayne
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:52, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedian in Residence BoF at Wikimania 2017[edit]

Hello!

My name is David Alves (User:Horadrim~usurped), and I'm an Wikipedian in Residence at RIDC NeuroMat (User:Horadrim). I've reach your contact through the Wikimedian in residence page in Outreach. As you may know, Wikimania 2017 is coming! I am here because, as a fellow WiR, I believe this would be a great opportunity for us to share experiences, discuss difficulties and exchange solutions, creating a community among us capable of supporting in other projects that would benefit from residents. In that sense, I have submitted a proposal of a Birds of a Feather activity to Wikimania that you can check out here. I hope to count with your support in this project and would like to invite you to join us if you participate in Wikimania. In case of any doubts, please feel free to contact me, either in my talk pages or by e-mail at david.alvesoutlook.com.

Thank you very much! ‎Horadrim~usurped (talk) 00:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wednesday night you are invited! Bay Area WikiSalon[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather for the Bay Area WikiSalon series to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks. We will have some announcements and lightning talks from the floor, and a breakout session. This is our one year anniversary, so there will be cake!

Please RSVP here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. This also helps us figure out how much food and drink to bring in.

See you soon! Ben Creasy and Wayne
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:19, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody is invited to the May 31 Bay Area WikiSalon series![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

The last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas. This month we are taking it on the road to Noisebridge makerspace/hackerspace!

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks. There will be periodic guided tours of Noisebridge. You can stay late, on your own! YeeHaw!

For details and to RSVP, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, May 2017

See you soon! Ben Creasy and Wayne
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:08, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Bay Area WikiSalon is an unSalon this month![edit]

Please stay where you are for an unSalon!

We are taking July off! Please gather your thoughts for changes that you would like to see in the next 10 months and present them at our July 26 WikiSalon.

Ordinarily, the last Wednesday evening of every month, wiki enthusiasts gather at the Bay Area WikiSalon series to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We normally allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend.

Mark your calendars now for Wednesday, July 26 at 6 p.m.! The venue will be the Noisebridge hackerspace/makerspace on Mission Street in San Francisco.

Sincerely, Ben Creasy and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:44, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Black Woman is God Edit-a-Thon in San Francisco, July 22[edit]

You're invited to The Black Woman is God Edit-a-Thon at SOMArts in San Francisco on Saturday July 22, 1-4 pm. It'll be at 934 Brannan Street (between 8th & 9th). Everyone is welcome to join this editing event, held in conjunction with The Black Woman is God exhibition to raise the online visibility of Black women artists and challenge the gaps in art history that erase or minimize Black women’s contributions as artists, activists and social change-makers. (Message requested by Dreamyshade and delivered on 14:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC). You can subscribe/unsubscribe to San Francisco event talk page notices here.)[reply]

What is Talk Page Theatre? Come find out![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Come find out what "Talk Page Theatre" is all about! The last Wednesday evening of every other month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to collaborate, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We allow time for informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks. We will be at the NEW Wikimedia Foundation offices! w00t!!!

Please note: You should RSVP here, and bring a photo ID that matches your registration name. This also helps us figure out how much food and drink to bring in.

For further details, see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, November 2017

See you soon! Ben Creasy, Nikikana, and Wayne | ( Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice ) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2017 election voter message[edit]

Hello, Maximilianklein. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

SFMOMA Edit-a-Thon in San Francisco, March 8[edit]

You're invited to an Art+Feminism Edit-a-Thon at SFMOMA in San Francisco on Thursday March 8, 5-9 pm. It'll be at 151 Third Street, 2nd floor, free to the public. Everyone is welcome to participate in an evening of communal updating of Wikipedia entries on subjects related to gender, art, and feminism. (This message is from User:Dreamyshade. You can subscribe/unsubscribe to San Francisco event talk page notices here.)
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bay Area WikiSalon invitation![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Periodically, on the last Wednesday evening of the month, wiki enthusiasts gather at Bay Area WikiSalon to munch, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We allow time for announcements, informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Bring a friend! Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. This months focus is images!

We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks (maybe pizza too!).

For further details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, May 2018 (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

See you soon! Ben Creasy, Nikikana, Stephen, and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE! Bay Area WikiSalon moved to June 6![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Our apologies, but we are rescheduling to Wednesday, June 6 at 6:00 p.m. due to a WMF host scheduling conflict.

For further details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2018 (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

See you soon! Niki, Ben, Stephen, and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:38, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

REMINDER: Bay Area WikiSalon is Wednesday, June 6[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

When: Wednesday, June 6 at 6:00 p.m.

For details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, June 2018 (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

See you soon! Niki, Lodewijk, Ben, Stephen, and Wayne | (Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:41, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red tools and technical support[edit]

We are preparing a list of tools and techncial support for Women in Red. I have tentatively added your name as you have provided assistance by creating and maintaining the Gender by language statistics. Please let me know whether you agree to be listed. You are of course welcome to make any additions or corrections.--Ipigott (talk) 07:21, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipigott: thanks for signing me up, I want to be signed up. I actually recently started a new job in which I work closely with Wikipedia data so it might be easier for me to contribute more when needed. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:23, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear about your new job, Max. Keep us posted on any relevant developments.--Ipigott (talk) 06:20, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bay Area WikiSalon invitation for July 25![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Periodically, on the last Wednesday evening of the month, wiki enthusiasts gather at the Bay Area WikiSalon series to munch, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We allow time for announcements, informal conversation and working on articles. Newcomers and experienced wiki users are encouraged to attend. Bring a friend! Kid/family friendly. Free Wi-Fi is available so bring your editing devices. This months focus is reliable sources!

We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks (maybe pizza too!).

For further details and to RSVP, please see: Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, July 2018 (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

See you soon! Avik (User:Quantumavik), Lodewijk (User:Effeietsanders), Ben Creasy (User:Ben Creasy), Stephen (User:Slaporte), and Wayne (User:Checkingfax)
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:14, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #1[edit]

Welcome to the first newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.

8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!

We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.

We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.

Share your experiences with newcomers

We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.

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

Bay Area WikiSalon invitation for September 26![edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Periodically, on the last Wednesday evening of the month, wiki enthusiasts gather at the Bay Area WikiSalon series to munch, mingle, and learn about new projects and ideas.

We will have beverages (including beer and wine) plus light snacks (maybe pizza too!).

Details and RSVP here (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

Last call for RSVPs for Wednesday evening[edit]

Please join us in downtown San Francisco!

Hey, folks. Reminder: Wednesday evening at 6 is the Bay Area WikiSalon series.

Details and RSVP here (note: we are meeting at the new WMF HQ at 120 Kearny Street!)

Growth team updates #2[edit]

Welcome to the second newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Our plan for the next quarter is ready

After consulting with many communities on the best ways to increase retention, we will focus during the next 3 months on these projects:

Understanding first day: to see what new editors do right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
Personalized first day: this idea will also help us learn a lot about new editors by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process. We hope to share initial results in December.
Focus on help desk: we plan to invite or redirect people to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.

You can read about the details of this plan on our team page.

How did we get to this plan?

We have set up our plan based on the 8 ideas we were considering. You can read about our analysis in our team updates, and detailed discussion on each idea.

We are looking for volunteers

Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.[reply]

Growth team updates #3[edit]

Welcome to the third newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Two Growth team projects to be deployed in next two weeks

We will be deploying the "Understanding first day" and "Personalized first day" projects on Czech and Korean Wikipedias in the coming weeks. See the new project pages below for full details on the projects, and our project updates page for their progress.

Understanding first day: learn about the actions new editors take right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
Personalized first day: learn about new editors' objectives by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process, and personalizing their onboarding. We hope to share initial results in December.

Third Growth team project begins

Focus on help desk: direct newcomers to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.

Best practices for helping newcomers

We are going to direct newcomers to help desks. But what's the best way to reply to a newcomer there? We have gathered some best practices for successful interactions, based on community experiences and some external documentation. The page has also been reviewed by some experienced community members who suggested some changes. That page is now open for translations. Comments and suggestions are still welcome!

We are still looking for volunteers

Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message[edit]

Hello, Maximilianklein. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #4[edit]

Welcome to the fourth newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

We need your feedback!

We have two requests for community members:

Now that data is coming in for the welcome survey, we are planning how to use that data to personalize the newcomer's first day. See our current thoughts here, and join the conversation here.
Try out the help panel's interactive prototype, and read about how we're planning to roll it out, and post any thoughts or reactions here.

Two Growth team projects have been deployed (detailed updates here)

Personalized first day (welcome survey) was deployed on November 20 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
- The survey is now being shown to half of new users (A/B test). Responses are being recorded in the database. We'll report on initial results during December.
- We are planning to test a second version of the survey, called "Variation C", which we think will maximize the number of users who complete the survey and stay on the wiki.
- The original objective of this project was to give newcomers the materials they need to achieve their goals, and so now we are currently planning how we will use the information collected in the welcome survey to personalize the newcomer's experience. We hope community members will read our current thinking and join the conversation here. Some of the plans we are considering include:
  - Making it easy for newcomers to see editing activity around the topic areas in which they indicated that they're interested.
  - Connecting interested newcomers to experienced editors.
  - Surfacing the help content most relevant to the reason for which the newcomers created their accounts.

Understanding first day (EditorJourney) was deployed on November 15 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias. It has been done after a longer security review and final testing than expected. Data is now being recorded for all new users on those wikis, and we've been auditing the data and preparing to make initial reports during December. Stay tuned for the next newsletter!

Help panel is under construction

Focus on help desk (help panel) is planned to be deployed during the week of January 7 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
This interactive prototype is the best way to see the design and wording in the feature.
We ran live user tests on the prototype, with results posted here.
In addition to giving the ability to ask a question, the help panel will also contain a set of links to existing help content. Our ambassadors on Czech and Korean Wikipedias are determining the right initial set of most helpful links in this task.
We encourage community members to try out the prototype and read about the rules for who will get the feature, and add any thoughts to this discussion.

We are still looking for volunteers

Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project updates page for detailed updates on the projects we work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 09:31, 7 December 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

re Wikipedia:Teahouse#Experiment test using AI to invite users to Teahouse[edit]

(I wanted to avoid cluttering the page, especially if it is to make a fool of myself for not knowing standard statistical good practices)

Coming from a different background, I am not sure I get why you define m1 and m2 at the design stage. If you can gather lots of data quickly and have few cofounding factors, you can just make your measurements and search exhaustively for correlations in the data ("physics paradigm"). If you have lots of cofounding factors and small sample sizes then you cannot do that so you must decide beforehand what correlations to use ("epidemiology paradigm").

IMO your study falls more in the "physics paradigm". You have two populations (invited / not invited) and for each of them you want to measure ORES score (real number?), retention (binary) and posting to Teahouse (binary). The "invited" population being 300*30 = 9k editors, the "non-invited" is I assume above that, and choosing half the invitations by ORES means you will cover a significant range of ORES values in the first population. The only problems are if the "retention" and "posting to TH" are such small fractions of the initial populations in both cases that even a 9k sample does not give a statistically sound estimator of the retention/posting rates, but if so that is going to be a problem no matter the metric you choose. I do understand that choosing the definition of "ORES score", "sticks around" and "posts to TH" should be done beforehand, but afterwards, there are few variables and large sample sizes so any correlation found between them is fair game, no?

Regarding your point about m2: I do believe that P(posts to TH|has not been invited) is not or weakly correlated to ORES score, but P(posts to TH|has been invited) certainly is correlated to ORES. But that is a mere belief and the point of running experiments is to get actual data. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 10:17, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again Tigraan, thanks for your in-depth and thoughtful oversight of the experiment -- helps me to sharpen my thinking and is of course good for the experiment to get scrutiny. Regarding the "physics paradigm" that is curious, I've never studied experimental physics, my background is more from behavioural science, which follows the principles of the Randomized controlled trial -- in which its customary to define the metric beforehand. It seems more like p-hacking to me to later try and see which of your variable correlate, since your explorations are not necessarily driven by theory. BTW I have since done the Power Analysis to determine how many trials we need to see a significant (p>0.05) increase in posting to TeaHouse. Currently the baseline 4% of invitees do. To have an 80% chance in witnessing a 1%-point increase to 5%, we need to have 14,000 samples in each group which means 12 weeks of running the experiment. To see a 2%-point increase to 6% of editors leaving a message we need 4 weeks see the full details of calculations.

Regarding m2, I get your point, and it's accurate. A fortunate twist is that because I want the AI to invite 150 users per day and I want the AI to run in real time I decided to tune the invite-threshhold to a level that would on average invite about 165-users per day (10% buffer). That means that I will be able to track about 15+ users per day that "would have been invited, but aren't" which is perfect control group to test an assumption like "P(posts to TH|has been invited) is correlated with ORES score." And as to your last point, yes let's run the experiments and see what the data say, I'm curious myself to know if high-ores score relates to more retention, which if True kind of makes for a circular logic that I agree this AI might be susceptible to. Maximilianklein (talk) 09:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Max, pardon me for butting in here! Skimmed through the discussion on the Teahouse talk page and here, and had a question I wanted to ask. You mention above that you want the AI version of HostBot to run in real time. Does that mean that it'll post invitations much faster than what HostBot currently does, or will it run on a schedule (i.e. a cron job)? I'm concerned that "time to invite" could be a confounding factor in the experiment, although I'm also in favor of getting the invites out faster. You might be able to control for that by comparing users who were invited by AI-HostBot with users who would be invited by AI-HostBot but later got invited by the other bot?

Apart from that, just wanted to say that I'm excited about this experiment, looking forward to learning more about what you find! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nettrom, thanks for paying attention and taking part in the discussion. You bring up a good point. The plan for HostBot-AI is to run in lets say "near-realtime" on cron-job approx. every 10 minutes. Now that is a bit unscientific as you bring up because we won't know whether any benefits are derived in part or whole from being closer to real-time. User Jtmorgan current author of HostBot, encouraged me to do this, because while it will have the disentanglement problem, they thought it would be better to move to another solution if it proves positive. To be complete there is also nothing stopping the current HostBot running more quickly than its implementation (I believe its stateless so relies on being run everyday), so we could have the disentanglement experiment later. Cheers, Maximilianklein (talk) 00:05, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Maximilianklein. Have you got approval to run Recitation-bot as a bot? If not, you need to stop using the account and get approval before making any more edits with it, or it will likely end up being blocked. You should also make it clear on the account's userpage that it belongs to you (i.e. with a template such as ((Alternative account))). Thanks —DoRD (talk) 23:40, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello DoRD. I'm so sorry, yes you are right about needing the bot approval. I had just finished prototyping this code, and had done some testing at test.wikipedia.org, I only wanted to a very small real-life test. I'm aware I should have gotten bot approval for that, it just slipped my mind for a moment. I wasn't planning to, and of course won't be running any more tests until approved through the proper bot approval process. I very much apologize, it was a mistake. Maximilianklein (talk) 08:49, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No apology is necessary, I simply don't want to see you end up in hot water over the username and bot edits. —DoRD (talk) 12:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make sure you saw my close of your unblock request, once you have filed a BRFA, and have approval to test - please ping me, and I will unblock the bot account. SQL ^{Query me!} 19:00, 29 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

SQL, thanks for the response I will follow your unblock instructions. Maximilianklein (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are cordially invited to Stanford University to celebrate Wikipedia's birthday[edit]

Join us in celebrating Wikipedia's 18th birthday at Stanford University!

I am delighted to invite you to the 2019 Wikipedia Day party at Stanford, which will be held on Tuesday, January 15, 2019, at 5:00-8:30pm.

There will be pizza, cake, and refreshments; both newcomers and experienced Wikimedians are welcome! We will have a beginner track with tutorials, and an advanced track with presentations, lightning talks, and tips and tricks. Admission is free, and you do NOT have to be a Stanford University student to attend.

Details and RSVP here • register here

See you soon! All the best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c)
(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here) | MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:40, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

VIAF duplicates - how to manage?[edit]

Hi! I saw you have been Wikipedian in Residence for OCLC, so I want to ask you a little question about VIAF: in the past months I've often (~ 100 times) found duplicates on VIAF and added them on Wikidata as multiple identifiers (e.g. d:Q1272518, d:Q763533, d:Q816057, d:Q15715298 and many others) ... I'd want to ask you: is VIAF taking into account these multiple identifiers, in order to check and merge duplicates? Or is there a more efficient way to notify VIAF these duplicates? Thank you very much, --Epìdosis 09:20, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #5[edit]

Welcome to the fifth newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

New projects for discussion[edit]

We began the "Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".

Engagement emails: this project was first discussed positively by community members here back in September 2018, and the team how has bandwidth to pursue it. The idea is that newcomers who leave the wiki don't get encouraged to return to the wiki and edit. We can engage them through emails that send them the specific information they need to be successful – such as contact from a mentor, the impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
Newcomer homepage: we developed the idea for this project after analyzing the data from the welcome survey and EditorJourney datasets. We saw that many newcomers seem to be looking for a place to get started – a place that collects their past work, options for future work, and ways to learn more. We can build this place, and it can connect to the engagement emails. The content of both could be guided by what newcomers say they need during their welcome survey, and contain things like contact from a mentor, impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?

Initial reports on newcomer activity[edit]

We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.

Welcome survey: the initial report on welcome survey responses is available here. Some of the main findings:
- Most users respond to the survey, giving it high response rates of 67% and 62% in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, respectively.
- The survey does not cause newcomers to be less likely to edit.
- The most common reason for creating an account in Korean Wikipedia is to read articles—not for editing—with 29% of Korean users giving that responses.
- Large numbers of respondents said they are interested in being contacted to get help with editing: 36% in Czech and 53% in Korean.
Understanding first day: the initial report on what newcomers do on their first day is available here. Some of the main findings:
- Large numbers of users view help or policy pages on their first day: 42% in Czech and 28% in Korean.
- Large numbers of users view their own User or User Talk page on their first day: 34% in Czech and 39% in Korean.
- A majority of new users open an editor on their first day – but about a quarter of them do not go on to save an edit during that time.

Help panel deployment[edit]

The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:

About 400 newcomers in each wiki have seen the help panel button.
About 20% of them open up the help panel.
About 50% of those who open it up click on one of the links.
About 5% of Czech users ask questions, and about 1% of Korean users ask questions.

We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.

How to create a good feedback page?[edit]

What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

User:Maximilianklein/draft/Hjrohin[edit]

Hey Maximilianklein, what's the deal here? Did not have you pegged as a a Schwimmer sock; I assume you're doing some sort of test with this page? If so, could you disable the unblock request template, please, so it stops showing up in Category:Requests for unblock? Cheers, Yunshui ^雲 _水 22:15, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yunshui, I was using that page to test a bot's handling of blocked users. Sorry fro the notification. I'll delete it now. Do you know if I put it in nowiki tags if it'll keep bothering you? Maximilianklein (talk) 22:43, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Figured as much; I was hurtling over here to slap down an LTA block on you (somehow we've never crossed paths, so your username was unfamilar to me) when I saw your contribs and thought, "hang on a minute...". Yeah, if you nowiki the template or disable it in some other way (tlx and so forth) it'll drop from the category - or, if that's going to spoil your test, just put a big notice at the top of the page so that other admins don't make the same mistake I did! Yunshui ^雲 _水 22:48, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yunshui Thanks for keeping your ears and eyes open. The nowiki solution works for my purposes. Sorry to have gotten in your way. Maximilianklein (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not a problem at all, no apology needed. Good luck with the bot! Yunshui ^雲 _水 22:51, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #6[edit]

Welcome to the sixth 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.

Plans for the next three months[edit]

The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:

Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
Continued iteration on help panel
Make the help panel available to more wikis
Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers

Newcomer homepage[edit]

The newcomer homepage is our current major project. We hope that community members can read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. You can see in the accompanying mockup how we are thinking about the homepage.

We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:

Shown in the User space
Desktop only (mobile comes next)
Four modules
- Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
- Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
- Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
- Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
Layout not yet personalized for each user

We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.

Help panel[edit]

During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:

2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
422 of them have opened it
175 have clicked links
27 have run searches
40 have asked questions

We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.

Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.

We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.

We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.

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

18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request HostBot 9[edit]

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HostBot 9 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT ⚡ 00:58, 10 April 2019 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place ((bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded)) anywhere on this page.[reply]

Growth team updates #7[edit]

Welcome to the seventh 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.

Newcomer homepage release this week[edit]

The main feature that the team has been working on over the last month is the newcomer homepage. This feature gives newcomers a place on the wiki to get oriented, learn about editing, and see their impact (see the accompanying screenshot from Test Wikipedia). We intend to release this feature to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias on May 2nd.

Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.

Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:

Additional questions will come to the help desk from the "help module" on the homepage.
Mentors who have signed up for the "mentorship module" will start to receive questions on their user talk pages.
More users may create and edit user pages through the "start module".

Recent and future homepage development[edit]

The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:

Mobile design: to work well in mobile browsers, the homepage needs a separate design and engineering. See the accompanying mockups for potential mobile designs.
Features for discovery: only about 15% - 30% of newcomers will discover their homepage by clicking their username at the top of their browser. We are going to be designing additional ways for newcomers to find out about it.
Additional modules: the initial version contains some of the simpler modules. Potential upcoming modules include task recommendations and a feed of activity on the wiki.

Other updates[edit]

Help panel leading indicators: our team published data on the help panel's initial performance. The evaluation exposes some areas for improvement, but we think the help panel's behavior so far is healthy and that it is not having a negative impact on the wikis. We will be publishing additional data, making plans, and asking for community thoughts around the future of the help panel over the course of the next two weeks. If you are interested in trying out the help panel on your wiki, please let us know on our team's talk page.
Long term plans: the team had a week of planning meetings, in which we talked about some longer-term ideas for Growth work. Some of the top ideas are: to extend the newcomer homepage to help user's build their identity through a user profile, and to revisit the "engagement emails" project that the team put on hold. Over the next month, we will be asking for community conversation around how the team can spend our time in the next fiscal year, that starts in July.

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

16:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019[edit]

Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.

Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.

---

Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.

Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.

In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:

What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?

Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.

Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.

Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!

More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.

Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.

If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.

On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your BRFA[edit]

Hello, your recent BRFA (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HostBot 9) was approved. Best regards, — xaosflux ^Talk 15:24, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #8[edit]

Welcome to the eighth 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.

May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.

General news[edit]

The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.

Early results from newcomer homepage release[edit]

The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
- About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
- About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
- Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
- Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.

Next steps for homepage[edit]

Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
- Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
- Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.

Future of team in the next year[edit]

The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
- Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
- Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
- Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
- Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.

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

09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of PLAYgreen Festival[edit]

The article PLAYgreen Festival has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Lack of independent coverage by multiple reliable sources

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the ((proposed deletion/dated)) notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing ((proposed deletion/dated)) will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Alduin2000 (talk) 02:01, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #9[edit]

Welcome to the ninth 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.

Opening Growth features to more wikis[edit]

The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.

Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:

Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.

General news[edit]

A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
- Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
- Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
- Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language. This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.

Mobile homepage and early analysis[edit]

The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.

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

14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

CivilServantBot[edit]

Hi, I don't know how often do you use your CS account, but this seems to be used. I have blocked your bot: CivilServantBot on pl.wikipedia. Here you can see it doesn't work properly. Creating drafts in own namespaces with questions for inactive users doesn't seem to be a proper usage. einsbor _talk 08:44, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Einsbor:, thanks for pointing this out to me! Yes, it's an error, somehow the test-mode the bot got turned on so instead of contacting the users, it does the test and creates the page in the sandbox. It's easily fixed. I will respond at pl:Wikipedia:Prośby_do_administratorów#CivilServantBot to keep everything in one place. Thanks again for your sharp eye. Maximilianklein(CS) (talk) 20:03, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #10[edit]

Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news[edit]

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

Growth at Wikimania[edit]

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

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed![edit]

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

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

18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #11[edit]

Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news[edit]

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

Help panel results[edit]

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

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

Newcomer tasks deployment[edit]

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

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

15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message[edit]

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If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are cordially invited to the SPIE Photonics West edit-a-thon on 02.02.2020[edit]

Join us for the SPIE Photonics West edit-a-thon this Sunday, 02.02.2020!

I am delighted to invite you to the SPIE Photonics West 2020 edit-a-thon, at Park Central Hotel (Franciscan I, 3rd Level / 50 Third Street / San Francisco, California), on Sunday, February 2, 2020, at 5:00-7:00pm.

Newcomers and experienced Wikimedians are welcome to participate alongside SPIE conference attendees. Admission is free. Training will be provided.

Details and sign-in here

See you soon! All the best, --Rosiestep (talk) 06:59, 31 January 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Growth team updates #12[edit]

Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news[edit]

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

Productive edits from newcomer tasks[edit]

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

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

Topic matching deployed[edit]

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

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

Next steps for newcomer tasks[edit]

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

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

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

17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #13[edit]

Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Join the conversation: structured tasks[edit]

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

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

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

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

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

Expanding to more wikis[edit]

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

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

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

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

Other updates[edit]

Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.

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

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

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

14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter 14[edit]

Welcome to the fourteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Success with guidance[edit]

We deployed the "Guidance" feature on June 15.

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

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

Structured tasks[edit]

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

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

Other technical updates[edit]

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

Community outreach[edit]

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

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

09:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Citation Bot question[edit]

Since you know about such things, I hope, and Smith is busy with life (I have github but not tool server access.). I assume we use "lighttpd" and not "lighttpd-plain" as our webservice. https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Toolforge/Web/Lighttpd Secondly, it appears that our own lighttpd.conf files was having no effect. https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/.lighttpd.conf Is it possible that the lighttpd config file does not get read since the php lives in a subdirectory? If so, do you know if we need "fastcgi.server +=" or "fastcgi.server =" in the file (I commented it out since I did not know and it had no effect anyway). If we made a symbolic link from the home directory to the html directory I assume we could then control the lighttpd.conf file using source control. Thoughts?? Or perhaps you could just make the lighttpd.conf file and restart the server for us. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:02, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team updates #15[edit]

Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Variants C and D deployed[edit]

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.

Structured tasks: add a link[edit]

As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.

Learn more about the findings.

Community news[edit]

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

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

10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary[edit]

Precious
Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:57, 10 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message[edit]

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Growth team updates #16[edit]

Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Growth features show impact[edit]

Newcomer task experiments results

The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.

In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.

This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:

the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
the probability that they are retained as editors
the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.

The number of suggested edits completed by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020, with a line for the total.
The number of distinct users completing suggested edits by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020.

Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.

You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page

General metrics

As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:

more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D[edit]

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.

News for mentors[edit]

A separate list for workshops hosts

During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.

Claiming multiple mentees at once

Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news[edit]

The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714

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

14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Cite Unseen update[edit]

Hello! Thank you for using Cite Unseen. The script recently received a significant update, detailed below.

You can now toggle which icons you do or don't want to see. See the configuration section for details. All icons are enabled by default except for the new generally reliable icon (described below).
New categorizations/icons:
- Advocacy: Organizations that are engaged in advocacy (anything from political to civil rights to lobbying). Note that an advocacy group can be reliable; this indicator simply serves to note when a source's primary purpose is to advocate for certain positions or policies, which is important to keep in mind when consuming a source.
- Editable: Sites that are editable by the public, such as wikis (Wikipedia, Fandom) or some databases (IMDb, Discogs).
- Predatory journals: These sites charge publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy.
- Perennial source categories: Cite Unseen will mark sources as generally reliable, marginally reliable, generally unreliable, deprecated, and blacklisted. This is based on Wikipedia's perennial sources list, which reflects community consensus on frequently discussed sources. Sources that have multiple categorizations are marked as varied reliability. Note that generally reliable icons are disabled by default to reduce clutter, but you can enable them through your custom config. A special thanks to Newslinger, whose new Sourceror API provides the perennial sources list in a clean, structured format.
With the addition of the new categorizations, the biased source icon has been removed. This category was very broad, and repetitive to the new advocacy and perennial sources categorizations that are more informative.

If you have any feedback, requested features, or domains to add/remove, don't hesitate to bring it up on the script's talk page. Thank you! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 23:09, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are receiving this message as a user of Cite Unseen. If you no longer wish to receive very occasional updates, you may remove yourself from the mailing list.

Hi, I have to present "women in science" on wikipedia on friday 29th of january 2021 at the BNF (French National Library) and I was wondering if I could access your prototype merging WHGI and Denelezeh, as I was planning to use Denelezeh but it is not operational any more. We really need that tool badly again ! Kinf regards Nattes à chat (talk) 21:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nattes à chat. Congatulations on your talk. It's still really a rough version, but if it's useful to you can access the pre-alpha prototype at [3], if you want statistics last updated in November I think this page should help you [4] . Hope that helps, a full version will come in the first quarter of 2021 some time. Maximilianklein (talk) 22:53, 26 January 2021 (UTC)ng[reply]

Thank you, however, nothing concerning women scientists. It is most unfortunate the team did not keep the previuos toll functionning before setting up the new one :/. We were really using it.... Nattes à chat (talk) 08:03, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #17[edit]

Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks[edit]

Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.

Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features[edit]

Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.

We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.

We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.

Variant testing[edit]

As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.

News for mentors[edit]

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)

Growth Newsletter #18[edit]

Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks[edit]

"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.

News for mentors[edit]

We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.

Community configuration[edit]

We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.

Scaling[edit]

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)

Growth Newsletter #19[edit]

Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks[edit]

"Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
"Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors[edit]

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. [5]
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 [6]

Community configuration[edit]

Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling[edit]

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. [7]
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. [8][9]
A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.

News for communities[edit]

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)

Precious anniversary[edit]

Precious
Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:36, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Growth Newsletter #20[edit]

Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits[edit]

As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement[edit]

Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!

News for mentors[edit]

The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!

Scaling[edit]

Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help[edit]

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)

Request for help[edit]

Can you login to the citation bot command line ssh interface (possibly:

ssh maximilianklein@login.toolforge.org
become citations

and do this, because the composer.json file got out of sync with the git and now git update won't run via the web interface. My developer account got blocked because I forgot to set an email address.

cd public_html
rm composer.json 
/usr/bin/git checkout composer.json

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Executed! Maximilianklein (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AManWithNoPlan: I hope this is the expected difference.

tools.citations@tools-sgebastion-10:~/public_html$ diff composer.json composer.json.backup
4c4,7
< 	"description": "Expands CS1/CS2 citation templates on Wikipedia"
---
> 	"description": "Expands CS1/CS2 citation templates on Wikipedia",
> 	"require": {
> 		"mediawiki/oauthclient": "1.2.0"
> 	}

Many thanks. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:31, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #21[edit]

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

New project: Positive reinforcement[edit]

The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.

For mentors[edit]

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

Scaling[edit]

"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. [10]

Suggested edits[edit]

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. [11]
Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.

Community configuration[edit]

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. [12]
Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [13]

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

13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to Local Wikimania Event in San Francisco this Friday[edit]

Hi!

Wikimania is happening and hopefully you're enjoying the sessions. While it's fairly last minute, you're warmly invited to participate in the local Wikimania-themed meetup in the Wikimedia Foundation office this Friday (tomorrow!). You will have to register in advance, but we would love to see more people from the WikiSalon community participate! For more information and registration, please check out meta:Wikimania 2022/San Francisco Meetup.

The event will involve hacking, teaching, learning, and celebrating and we'll have snacks. We will have the opportunity to watch live sessions at Wikimania together in the afternoon. The rest of the day we'll have opportunity to participate in the hackathon, and we may have some on-demand workshops/learning sessions.

In case we run out of space, it's first-come-first-serve so let us know soon! Hope to see you there.

(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

On behalf of the Bay Area Wiki Salon team and Bittakea, Effeietsanders

Growth team newsletter #22[edit]

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

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

As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.

About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.

If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.

Ongoing projects and explorations[edit]

We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.

Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).

Experiments analysis[edit]

Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:

Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).

Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.

Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.

News for mentors[edit]

A new system for the mentors list

The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.

The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [14][15]

Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.

Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.

A tip for mentors

Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.

And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.

Other improvements

Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:

While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [16]
Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [17]
Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [18]

Recent changes and fixed bugs[edit]

We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [19]
Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [20]
Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [21]
In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [22]

Have a question? A suggestion?[edit]

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

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

17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Always precious[edit]

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:52, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #23[edit]

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

Highlights[edit]

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

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test[edit]

The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.

Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.

This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.

Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback[edit]

After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:

Patroller fatigue:
- By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.

Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
- Add a Link
  - Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
  - The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
  - The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
- Add an Image
  - Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
  - Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
  - We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [23]

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.

Recent changes[edit]

All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [24]
The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [25][26]
Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors[edit]

All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
- We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
- Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
- Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
- A new special page — Special:ManageMentors — now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [27]

Deployments[edit]

Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [28]

Improving this newsletter[edit]

We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

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

20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Source code for gratitude[edit]

Hi Max, hope you're doing well!

I was reviewing tools hosted on Toolforge and noticed that yours didn't have a link to the source code. Is it published anywhere? Publishing source code is a recommended best practice. Thanks! Legoktm (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Legoktm , thanks, updated. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:37, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #24[edit]

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

Newcomer experience projects[edit]

The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:

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

Newcomer tasks[edit]

Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [29]
The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [30]

Mentorship[edit]

When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [31]
Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [32]
Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
- Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
- If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news[edit]

In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [33]
This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations[edit]

Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.

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

14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #25[edit]

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

Celebrations[edit]

Leveling up release

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

5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February

In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.

Recent changes[edit]

Add a link
- Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [34][35]
- We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [36]
Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work[edit]

Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
- We are starting design work. [37]
- Growth team Ambassadors helped with an initial evaluation of these section-level image suggestions. [38]
- We will start a community consultation in which we share initial ideas and designs soon. [39]
IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – We will support this project for all Growth Team maintained products and extensions that may be affected by IP Masking. [40]

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

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #26[edit]

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

One million Suggested Edits[edit]

We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!

The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)

Positive reinforcement[edit]

Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.

The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [41]
The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image[edit]

We are creating a new section-level variation of the “add an image” task. We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway. [42]

Other updates[edit]

We are progressively releasing Add a link to more wikis. [43]
After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated Thanks usage on the wikis. There is no evidence that thanks increased after the feature was added on more pages.
We helped with code review for the 2023 Community Wish to add Notifications for user page edits. [44]
We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our Growth’s Community events report.

What's next for Growth?[edit]

We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!

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

15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #27[edit]

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

Annual plan for Growth[edit]

We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.

Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:

Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.

Suggested edits[edit]

We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.

Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [45]

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.

Mentorship[edit]

The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.

More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [46]

The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.

Positive reinforcement[edit]

We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.

In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.

Growth contributes to IP Editing migration[edit]

The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:

the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [47]

Community Configuration 2.0[edit]

We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:

We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [48]
We have started to investigate design improvements. [49]
We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [50]

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

12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #28[edit]

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

Community configuration 2.0[edit]

Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.

IP Masking[edit]

The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)

Mentorship[edit]

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

Scaling Growth features[edit]

We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.

Other news[edit]

We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.

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

Trizek_(WMF) Talk 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Growth team newsletter #29[edit]

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

Community Conversations[edit]

The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.

This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.

Impact Module[edit]

At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [51]

Add a Link[edit]

We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [52] [53]

We have a few Wikipedias remaining:

German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.

Community Configuration[edit]

We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [54] 🖂
Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.

Mentorship[edit]

When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [55]

We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [56]

We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [57]

It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [58]

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

18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)