Research:New editor support strategies/Related work

Page Curation[edit]

I could not find any Foundation-sponsored research on the project, either qualitative or quantitative. >_<

HOWEVER, I was able to generate current usage stats on Special:NewPagesFeed by forking a db query from a curious Wikipedian. Looks like the feed is quite popular! Over a hundred editors have used it 50+ times in the past 3 months. I will be pulling from this list to contact people for interviews.

Moodbar/FeedbackDashboard[edit]

These are two components of the same system. The system is no longer active. Moodbar was the pop-up prompt that new editors see, FeedbackDashboard was the Special: page where Moodbar feedback was listed, and it was designed to help experienced editors reach out to the newcomers who provided feedback.

Moodbar on MediaWiki.org
FeedbackDashboard on MediaWiki.org
Research page on Moodbar's usage and impact
Research paper on Moodbar's impact on editor retention

It appears there was going to be a third component of the Moodbar/FeedbackDashboard system, called the 'Mark as helpful' extension. I don't think it was ever built. Basically, it was supposed to close the loop: when experienced editors responded to the new editor's Moodbar message, the new editor had the option of letting the experienced editor know that they found the response helpful. This seems like a good idea to me, and a feature to consider for the edit review tools.

According to the various research finding pages for the MB/FD project, about 75% of new editors who used Moodbar left a free-text comment, but only about 20% of those received a response. This might be an indicator of the adoption problem that eventually got MB/FD cancelled. I'm sure DarTar knows the full story.

MoodBar/FeedbackDashboard was a well-designed system, and there was a lot of good research done during development, and on its impact after deployment. In many ways it is kind of a cross between the Edit Review Feed currently proposed, and the Teahouse. In Moodbar, the new editor initiated the interaction (like Teahouse), their question/comment was posted to a feed, and the experienced editor followed up via the FeedbackDashboard interface (like EditReviewFeed). It's a shame it's no longer active anywhere, because I'd like to play around with it again :/

I think that it will be important for the current project to learn what is currently "working" about NewPagesFeed, and how it's being used. I also think it will be worthwhile for Joe to sit down with Dario and go over what worked about Moodbar/FeedbackDashboard, and what didn't. It will be especially important to learn why the project was dropped after so much work went into it—could be just "internal" WMF issues, but my guess is there were problems related to lack of widespread adoption, or possibly misuse, as well.