Research:Successful Newcomers Survey 2025/Resources

All the things we asked you about!

Hi there! You're likely here because you just took this survey from the Wikimedia Foundation's Research Team, but even if you're not, maybe you'll find this page helpful.

First off, welcome to Meta-Wiki! Meta-Wiki is a place where Wikimedians and the Wikimedia Foundation document and coordinate across Wikimedia projects.

As promised, we wanted to give you links to all the things we asked you about in the survey in case you want to use them in the future. As a note, this was written by TAndic (WMF) (talk) (hello!), the researcher for this survey, and may not reflect the exact language of the communities.

Just the links

Here are the links to what we asked you about - all of these will lead to the English Wikipedia version.

Your Homepage

• Special:Homepage

Your User page

• Special:MyPage - you can also read more about User Pages.

Your Talk page

• Special:MyTalk

Your Sandbox

• Read more about sandboxes.

Your Contribution history

• Special:MyContributions

Your Watchlist

• Special:Watchlist

Your user Preferences

• Special:Preferences

Article Talk pages

• An example Talk page for the article about Hedgehogs

Article revision history

• An example from the hedgehog article revision history

Thanks

• You can thank other editors for their edit by going to the article revision history

Wikipedia Teahouse

• Wikipedia:Teahouse

WikiProjects

• WikiProjects

Affiliates

• Affiliates, User Groups, and Chapters

Contests & Events

• Special:AllEvents
• You can also find events and contests on the Community bulletin board

In a bit more detail

Your spaces

Your Homepage

The Homepage is a recent feature which has a few sections to help newer editors start editing. It provides a feed of suggested edits with some basic instructions, information about the pageviews on articles you've recently edited, and a way to contact your mentor if you were assigned one.

You can find your Homepage on English Wikipedia here: Special:Homepage.

If it's empty (a red link), you can activate your Homepage by going to your Preferences, and under the "User profile" tab at the very bottom, clicking "Display newcomer homepage".

Your User page

A User page is a way for editors to provide some information about themselves or their editing activities and interests, or organize their own editing activity, if they wish to. You can visit or create your user page here: Special:MyPage.

You can also reach your user page on a desktop browser by clicking on your username at the top right (unless you have it set to your Homepage, in which case it'll be there under your username at the top!) or on a mobile browser by clicking the three bars on the top left and clicking your username.

Before you create your user page, you may want to read a bit about user pages and note that these pages are public and you should use caution in providing non-public personal information about yourself.

Your Talk page

User Talk pages are how editors communicate with each other directly. You can visit your Talk page here: Special:MyTalk.

You can also reach it by going to your user page and clicking "Talk" under your username.

Your Sandbox

A sandbox is a place where editors can practice editing, work on drafts of articles, and lots of other things -- for example, if you're working with tables for the first time, a sandbox is a great place to practice or make a first draft.

On a computer or laptop browser, you can reach your sandbox by clicking the little person icon at the top right corner and clicking "Sandbox". On a mobile browser, you'll first need to click the three bars on the top left, go to Settings, and turn on "Advanced mode" -- this will make a little person icon on the top right which will link you to your sandbox.

You can read more about sandboxes here.

Your contribution history

Like articles, editors also have their own record of edits! You can look at your history of edits on English Wikipedia by going here: Special:MyContributions

If you edit on multiple wiki projects, you can visit your contributions page on each one to see your contributions there.

On a computer or laptop browser, you can find your contributions by going to the little person icon at the top right corner, and clicking "Contributions". On a mobile browser, you can find it by clicking the three lines on the top left corner, and clicking "Contributions".

Watchlist

Every editor has their own private Watchlist, which can be found here: Special:Watchlist.

On a computer or laptop browser, you can also find your watchlist by going to the little person icon at the top right corner, and clicking "Watchlist". On a mobile browser, you can find it by clicking the three lines on the top left corner, and clicking "Watchlist".

A Watchlist is way to "watch" articles you care about, and you've likely been prompted to add an article to your watchlist when you click the final button to submit your edit. Some editors use this to look at changes to an article after they've edited it, sometimes to make sure it's not being vandalized, and sometimes to thank the editors who came after them and made improvements! Other editors might add an article to their watchlist because they want to be reminded to edit it later, because they think not enough people are watching it, or just because they like an article.

You can add any article to your watchlist by clicking the little star at the top of the article, next to the page history link.

Your Preferences or user settings

You can change your account settings by visiting: Special:Preferences

On a computer or laptop browser, you can find your preferences by going to the little person icon at the top right corner, and clicking "Preferences". On a mobile browser, you can find it by clicking the three lines on the top left corner, clicking "Settings" and then scrolling down and clicking "Preferences".

Article components

Article Talk Page

An article Talk page is where editors can discuss aspects of the article, propose changes, and sometimes even take suggestions from readers or other editors to add something. You'll see it at the top left of an article, directly under the title, right next to "Article". (On Meta-Wiki it is called "Discussion", which is how you'll see it on this page.)

As an example, here is the Talk page for the article about Hedgehogs on English Wikipedia!

Article Revision History

You can look at the history of edits on any article (including this one!). On a computer, you can get to the history by clicking the "View history" link at the top right, under the article title. On a phone, you'll also find it right under the article title, but it will be an icon that looks a bit like a clock with an arrow circling it towards the left.

As an example, here's the hedgehog article revision history.

You can also look at what are called "Diffs" (differences) here:

• When you click on "prev" left of the date of a revision, it shows you what was changed in the article at that time!
• And if you click on the "cur" link, it'll show you everything that has changed since that revision until the most recent one.
• When you click the date itself, it shows you what the article looked like at the time. If you go all the way to the beginning of the history, you can see the first version of the article -- check out the humble beginnings of the Hedgehog article from 2002!

The article history also has some neat external tools you can check out near the top, like a way to look at the pageviews over time and the page statistics, which tell you a bit about who has edited the article. These tools are hosted on toolforge, a place where editors who want to develop tools for Wikimedia projects can do so.

Thanks feature

You can thank other editors (and be thanked by them!) through the article revision history (including on pages like Talk pages). At the end of each revision, there's a "thanks" link. Clicking it will change it to "Publicly send thanks?", which is asking you to confirm you'd like to thank the editor for their edit.

You can learn more about thanks and thanking etiquette here.

Community Spaces

Wikipedia Teahouse

The Wikipedia Teahouse is a friendly place for newcomers and experienced editors to ask questions! You can get to the Teahouse here: Wikipedia:Teahouse

The Teahouse is a place to ask questions, but it also has lots of resources, including ways to find articles to edit and connections to WikiProjects.

WikiProjects

WikiProjects are groups of editors who want to work on specific topics, themes, regions (and even many cities!), or types of editing. You can learn more about them here: WikiProjects, and search for projects (I find the bambot list linked above the search bar especially useful!).

Affiliates

Wikimedia Movement Affiliates, User Groups, and Chapters are officially recognized groups of editors working regionally or thematically. Many affiliates host in-person or online editing trainings, get-togethers, and other ways for Wikimedians to connect.

Contests & Events

Affiliates and other groups of editors sometimes have contests or editing events that focus on a specific theme or activity. You can check out current and upcoming events on all wikis by going to: Special:AllEvents

Wiki Loves Monuments is an example of an event that takes places annually across multiple countries, asking editors to take photos of monuments in their area! You might be invited to participate in an editing event through a banner, by joining an affiliate, and even on your Talk page, but you can also look for events though the AllEvents page.

Some other potentially helpful tips

Searching for policy and guidance pages

When you're using the search bar on Wikipedia, you're usually directed to articles first. However, if you type "WP:" before your search (short for "Wikipedia:"), you'll be searching in guidance and policy pages, as well as spaces like the Teahouse!

Special: pages

You might have noticed many of the links above were to "Special:" pages - these pages are sort of like the underlying maintenance pages of a wiki project (so things like your user Preferences and Homepage live there, as well as many other things, like a list of pages that have no links to them!). You can check out the English Wikipedia Special pages here: Special:SpecialPages.