Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features

How do I find a mentor for someone?

Specifically this editor,[1] a good faith editor who clearly needs help. I don't have the time (terminally ill and with other priorities}/. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 09:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Note, while the account was created in 2006, there's been such a long gap in editing that the user is to all intents a purposes a newbie. See their talkpage. Bishonen | tålk 10:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC).

I can take them on and help them if no one objects. --ARoseWolf 11:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

At the moment, this user's mentor is ARoseWolf. I used {{#mentor:Futuristicediting}} to get the mentor's name. Maybe ask him too?

As the user has a very old account, they might not be aware of the fact that they have access to special:Homepage, where their mentor is presented.

As a reminder, to claim a mentee, just visit Special:ClaimMentee.

Hope this helps! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) thanks, but that would be a random mentor. I see I even have one. ARosesWolf would be an excellent mentor. Doug Weller talk 15:15, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't noticed that ARosesWolf already claimed the user! Good!

@Doug Weller, what do you mean by "random mentor"? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I did claim them and have opened a discussion to help them enroll where they will be able to easily ask questions to my talk page. I'll do my best to walk them through the process and help them with editing. I just want to say this here that it is an honor to do this for Doug who has helped me numerous times and had a huge impact on my editing and on my personal life through Wikipedia. --ARoseWolf 15:42, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

My mentor was presumably assigned randomly. Was yours? We all seem to have one. At the moment I seem to have been assigned a temporary one as mine is away. But I think I'll be ok. :) Doug Weller talk 16:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

They are all assigned randomly, yes.

We are considering to have mentors being assigned based on topics newcomers select, but for this we will need a critical mass of mentors English Wikipedia has not yet reached. In fact you haven't yet reached the number of mentor to provide a mentor to each newcomer... Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Why do I have a mentor?

I've been here for over 15 years, was on ArbCom, etc. Somehow I clicked on something that gave me that big question mark on the bottom right hand page. Doug Weller talk 14:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Every user has a mentor assigned, but most established users do not have "mentorship" options activated - you may have opted in somehow. In Special:Preferences you can uncheck the Newcomer editor features at the bottom of the page and see if that solves your issue. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Mentorship Twinkle welcome template?

Hi! I was wondering if there was some welcome template I could use with my mentees, as {{Welcome student}} doesn't really apply. — ♠Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. ♠ 18:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Ixtal! There's {{Mentor welcome}}, or this one I use that I ripped off from Panini! (though its current format doesn't use revisionuser). Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 18:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Lawsuit pending, I copyrighted that. Panini! • 🥪 18:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

What's with all the "noinclude" in there? Doesn't seem to change anything if I remove it? -- asilvering (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Two reasons, both because I'm lazy: at the bottom, I wanted it to auto-sign, and everywhere else, I was trying to get it to substitute page names correctly and I'm not incredibly familiar with that kind of markup so I just copied over from another template (I forget which) and it worked so I left it. "Noinclude" just means that everything wrapped in those <noinclude></noinclude> tags won't be included in a substitution of the page – so, for example, the <nowiki> tags will be removed at the end when the template is substituted, allowing the ~~~~ to sign it for me. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 20:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, here I was assuming you were just copying the source code out every time. That makes more sense! I'll just start substing this directly instead of stealing it and modifying it, then. Panini will have to sue us both. (you're welcome). -- asilvering (talk) 20:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Nah, too much work. I'd suggest double-checking that it correctly identifies you as the mentor, as I had trouble getting that to work correctly when I tried earlier, though I think it's fixed now. (Do we split the costs then, or do we have to pay double?) Perfect4th (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

yep, it works! Capitalized, alas, but I suppose I could always kidnap and edit it in the future if that drives me enough crazy. -- asilvering (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm already named in too many lawsuits right now (tongue in cheek) so I'll stick to @Panini!'s original template, modified by @Perfect4th, that remains for public use. lol --ARoseWolf 20:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Seeking feedback of 'beginner' editors for research

Dear Growth Team mentors, I hope this is an appropriate post to make.

The project I am attached to, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects at Wikimedia Deutschland is currently holding interviews for the experiences of editors knowledge, awareness and experience of Wikidata and its integrations into the sibling projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and the others). We have heard from many expert or very experienced editors, but we lack insights and experiences from new or 'beginner' editors.

If any of your mentees may be interested or you have ideas on where I can post to reach this audience, I would be happy if you could share the Signup link below or reply to my post.

Interview Information:

• Conducted in English.
• Compensation is available.
• Sign up survey: This link can be shared and sent to interested editors.
• Experience Level: Ideally we are seeking feedback from editors who may only have a passing or surface-level knowledge of Wikidata and are at the start of their editing lifetime.

We are also taking feedback here in written form for those who cannot or do not want to attend an interview. Thank you for any help you can provide, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 16:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

A large but non-random sample of beginning student editors can be found through the Wikipedia Education program. These student editors have different motivations than are typical of new editors (i.e., succeed at their Wikipedia-associated university course) and are likely to leave Wikipedia for good when their course is over, but if that doesn't matter for the purposes of your research, maybe they could help. They have done surveys before, such as for their training program. Adding Sage Ross (WMF). Mathglot (talk) 19:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Growth News, April 2024

The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.

If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Community Configuration

Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.

An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.

In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.

Experiment Results

Add a Image experiment analysis results

The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:

• The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
• The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
• The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
• A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).

Personalized praise experiment results

This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)

English donors encouraged to try editing

As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)

Future work

Annual Plan

The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

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

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)