User talk:Ed Erhart (WMF)
Add topicThis page is for discussions related to the User:Ed Erhart (WMF) page. Please remember to:
Archives: 1 |  |
This Month in GLAM: April 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: April 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 4 • April 2024
This Month in GLAM: May 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: May 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 5 • May 2024
- Albania - Georgia Wikimedia Cooperation 2024
- Aleksandër Xhuvani University Editathon in Elbasan
- Central Bicol State University of Agriculture LitFest features translation and article writing on Wikipedia
- Empowering Youth Council in Bulqiza through editathons
- We left a piece of our hearts at Arhavi
- Wiki Movimento Brasil at Tech Week and Education Speaker Series
- Wikimedia MKD trains new users in collaboration with MYLA
This Month in Education: June 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 6 • June 2024
- From a Language Teacher to a Library Support Staff: The Wikimedia Effect
- 5th WikiEducation 2024 Conference in Mexico
- Lviv hosted a spring wikischool for Ukrainian high school students
- First class of teachers graduated from Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom 2024
- Empowering Digital Citizenship: Unlocking the Power of Open Knowledge with Participants of the LIFE Legacy
- Wiki Movimento Brazil supports online and in-person courses and launches material to guide educators in using Wikimedia projects
- Where to find images for free? Webinar for librarians answered many questions
- Wikimedia MKD and University of Goce Delchev start a mutual collaboration
This Month in GLAM: June 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2024
[edit]
Hello, and welcome to the app's second newsletter in 2024!
In this edition, we will review our achievements and progress from the first half of 2024!
- Android
- Edit Patrol is now available on production for all Wikis!
- Donation through G-Pay is now available within the app.
- iOS
- "Add an image" suggested edit is available for all Wikis! It is available to all users with more than 50 edits.
- We now support full-page editing on Talk pages.
And you can subscribe to this newsletter.
~~ARamadan-WMF11:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, July 2024
[edit]
Community Configuration
[edit]The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.
If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!
Current work
[edit]Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Future work
[edit]Increase constructive activation on mobile
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Stay informed
[edit]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.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: July 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in GLAM: August 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: August 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 7 • August 2024
- Cross-Cultural Knowledge Sharing: Wikipedia's New Frontier at University of Tehran
- Let's Read Wikipedia in Bolivia reaches teachers in Cochabamba
- Results of the 2023 “Wikipedia for School” Contest in Ukraine
- Edu Wiki Camp in Serbia, 2024
- Wikimedia Human Rights Month this year engaged schools in large amount
- Strengthening Education Programs at Wikimania 2024: A Global Leap in Collaborative Learning
- Wiki Education programs are featured in a scientific outreach magazine, and Wiki Movimento Brasil offers training for researchers in the Amazon
- Wiki Movimento Brasil aims to adapt a game about Wikipedia, organize an academic event for scientific dissemination, and host the XXXIII Wiki-Education Workshop
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2024
[edit]Hello, and welcome to the app's third newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we will highlight the accomplishments and progress made during July, August, and September 2024!
iOS Updates
Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature across both iOS and Android! (T372954), good opportunity to try it yourself ;) This tool allows users to enhance Wikipedia articles by adding relevant images. It’s a great way to contribute and improve the visual experience for readers.
The iOS team kicked off the Alt Text experiment to improve image descriptions for accessibility. This feature helps ensure that visually impaired users can better understand the content of images through descriptive text.
The iOS App has been transitioning from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports both reading and editing. After adding a number of editing features, the navigation system of the app needs to grow and change to support them and future additions. Improving our navigation will allow for more app users to discover editing features, and allow experienced users quicker access to their most-used tools. This refresh incorporates findings from usability testing with multiple variants of the App's navigation. The team is currently planning phased rollouts over the coming year to improve user experience. (Phase 1: T373714)
Android Updates
Improvements were made to the Places feature in response to user feedback, including larger cluster icons and a Wikipedia logo for articles without images (T371067, T370094). Also, the team is exploring designs to allow users to explore articles from multiple language wikis simultaneously and will adjust the zoom logic to show nearby locations upon launch (T352757, T368792).
- WikiTrivia Game
The team prepared for the WikiTrivia Game during a hackathon, selecting a data source and creating initial designs (T371508, T371510).
Work began on adding Recommended Content to search, iterating on design concepts and testing performance (T371613).
The team is now engaging with several wikis to implement Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions based on prior experimental results.
- Sharing reading lists
Android users can now share reading lists with others, expanding community collaboration (T370703).
And some performance enhancements: Revision tags for app edits were successfully implemented (T366731, T366732).
The app now supports URL sharing on Pixel devices, thanks to volunteer developer contributions (T370020).
Stay tuned for future updates as we continue to enhance your Wikipedia experience! And you can subscribe to this newsletter.
--17:17, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: September 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
Growth News, October 2024
[edit]Current work
[edit]Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
Constructive activation experimentation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
- The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
- Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
Future work
[edit]As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Community events
[edit]- Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
- Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.
Stay informed
[edit]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.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF), 15:44, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: October 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: October 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 8 • October 2024
- CBSUA Wiki Education turns 1 year
- 7th Senior WikiTown took place in Becov nad Teplou, Czech Republic
- Edit-a-thon about Modern Architecture in Kosovo
- Empowering Digital Literacy through Wikimedia in South Sudan
- Many new articles and contributions in September and October for Wikimedia MKD
- New Record: 5 Events in Municipal Library within a Month
- Wiki-Education programs in Brazil are centered around the Wikidata and Wikisource platforms
- WikiChallenge African Schools wins the “Open Pedagogy” Award 2024 from OE Global
- Wikipedia helps in improving cognitive skills
- Wikipedia in Graduate Studies: Expanding Research Impact
- WiLMa PH establishes a Wiki Club
This Month in Education: November 2024
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 13 • Issue 9 • November 2024
- Auckland Museum Wikipedia Student Programme
- Citizenship and free knowledge on Wikipedia in Albanian language
- Engaging students with Wikipedia and Wikidata at Hasanuddin University’s Wikimedia Week
- Minigrant initiative by empowering the Rrëshen community in Albania
- Wikidata birthday in Albania, 2024
- Wikidata birthday in School
- Wikimedia Education Workshop at Lumbini Technological University
- Wikimedia MKD's new collaborations and new content
- Improving Historical Knowledge on Persian Wikipedia through a continuous Wikimedia Education Program: Shahid Beheshti University Wikipedia Education Program
This Month in GLAM: November 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Fourth quarter of 2024
[edit]Hello, and welcome to the app's final newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we’ll highlight the key updates and progress made during October and November 2024!
iOS Updates
Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review
In November, we released the first iteration of the Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review to users in Italy and Mexico, covering Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedia! This experimental feature offers personalized insights based on reading, editing, and donation history for iOS app users for 2024. If this initial version is successful, we hope to improve upon it and make it available to everyone within the iOS app in January 2025. For more information on how your data is used and how to access your Year in Review, please visit the project page, or watch a short video demonstration of the feature.
The alternative text experiment concluded on November 4, and we are currently analyzing the results. The edits are being reviewed by accessibility experts and moderators active on the iOS app for additional feedback.
Preliminary results show that prompting users on an image they’ve just added leads to higher completion rates (18%) compared to unrelated images (6%). The overall revert rate for alt text edits was 3.4%, lower than the app’s average revert rate of 8.1%. We’ll decide next steps for this feature after completing the analysis.
We completed the first phase of our Navigation refresh, and released a new profile menu into the production version of the app. Our work was coordinated in this Epic: T373714
Android Updates
Private Donor Recognition Experiment
We launched an experiment in France and the Netherlands, exploring the impact of private donor recognition on current and prospective donors. Users who donated through the app will see an active badge on the contributions page, while those who haven’t donated will see a prompt to do so. The experiment will run for 20 days, after which we will evaluate the results. This work was coordinated under Epic: T376303.
The team began work on the "Rabbit Holes" experiment to increase retention among new readers. The experiment is designed to help users more easily discover and connect with content they are interested in. It is being coordinated under Epic: T378612.
The Recommended Content in Search experiment showed promising results. Personalized recommendations led to higher retention (86.5%) compared to non-personalized recommendations (64.9%), with positive feedback from users.
We added a launcher shortcut for quicker access to the "Places" feature in the app. (T375367)
Looking Ahead
As we close out 2024, we’re excited about all the progress made and the work ahead in 2025. Keep an eye out for more updates and improvements we hope will enhance your Wikipedia experience!
Thank you for being part of this journey, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!
-- ARamadan-WMF 13:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: December 2024
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: January 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 1 • January 2025
- Advancing Education Pillar in Kosovo: 2024 Journey
- Auckland Museum Wikipedia Students Making Progress
- Celebrating 10 Years of Wiki Education
- Empowering Multilingual Students: Expanding Wikipedia Through Collaboration of foreign languages faculty's students of the University of Tehran
- Ensuring accurate and authentic information with 1Lib1Ref Campaign in Anambra
- Experiences of Wikipedia in the classroom with a gender perspective in Monterrey
- Fine Arts University Students exploring Wikipedia in Tirana, Albania
- Lviv hosted Ukraine’s first student photo walk for Wikipedia
- Many new trained volunteers and new articles at the end of the year in Macedonia
- Wikimedia and Scientific Events in Brazil
- Wiki Workshop- Call for Contributions
This Month in GLAM: January 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
Growth Newsletter #33
[edit]A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.
This year, the Growth team is exploring ways to help more new account holders start editing—and do so constructively, meaning their edits are not reverted. Our latest experiments include:
- Gradual rollout of "Add a Link" at English Wikipedia – We are gradually introducing the "Add a Link" structured task to newcomers at English Wikipedia (T386029). This serves as a natural A/B test to measure its impact on activation, retention, and revert rates (T382603). Previous experiments on pilot wikis showed that "Add a Link" increases newcomer participation, particularly by helping them make constructive (non-reverted) edits.
- Testing in-article suggestions for first-time editors – Many new account holders want to contribute but don’t know where to start. To help, we’re piloting a feature that surfaces structured task suggestions directly in an article’s read view for brand-new editors (T385343). These suggestions will appear for logged-in users with no edits, providing a clear, simple way to begin contributing that is surfaced while they read.
Newcomers often struggle to find their place in Wikipedia’s collaborative environment. While experienced editors easily discover events like edit-a-thons and writing campaigns, newcomers often miss out.
- To bridge this gap, we launched the Community Updates module for the Newcomer Homepage. This module is disabled by default, allowing Community Admins to decide how (or if) to use it.
- If your community hosts events, consider setting up a Community Update to engage and welcome newcomers! Learn more on Diff. To configure, visit Special:CommunityConfiguration.
Community Configuration is now available across all wikis, including non-Wikipedia projects (T383910). Community Configuration allows admins to customize various features like Growth features and Automoderator for their communities, and more recently the Babel extension now allows admins to modify configuration:
- Babel customization – Admins can now configure Babel settings (T374348), including category naming, automatic category creation, and more. See an example on Wikimedia Commons.
- Upcoming configurable features – Projects exploring community configuration options include: Incident Reporting System (T374113) and Cite backlinks (T378807).
Mentors play a key role in guiding new editors. If you’re interested in mentoring, or turning mentorship on at your wiki, check out the Mentorship FAQ
- Starting February 17, 100% of new accounts at English Wikipedia will be assigned a mentor (T384505).
- At Spanish Wikipedia, on 50% of newcomers get a mentor. Experienced contributors are encouraged to join mentorship so that Spanish Wikipedia can provide a mentor to all new users.
Looking Ahead
[edit]In the coming months, we will continue balancing maintenance work—such as deprecating EditGrowth Config (T367574) and migrating Statslib (T359352) — with user-facing improvements that support new editors and foster the next generation of contributors.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:00, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: February 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: February 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 2 • February 2025
- Activities series at the Shefit Hekali school in Peqin, Albania
- Wikimedia Brazil has formed a partnership with a public policy research institute
- Preserving Heritage: Tuluvas Aati Month Educational Wikimedia Programs
- Reflecting on our Past: Farewell to the Auckland Museum Summer Students
- Successful Conclusion of the Second Phase of "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" in Yemen
- Wiki Workshop in Mitrovica
- Wikimedia MKD' Education: Lots of new trained users, lots of new articles
- Wikimedia Serbia receives accreditation from the National Library of Serbia for the Wiki Senior seminar
WP 25: symbols etc
[edit]Hi Ed, do you know if or when c:Category:Wikipedia 25 will contain some graphic work or symbols released by the WMF to be used by the movement? Best regards Christoph Jackel (WMDE) 11:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Christoph Jackel (WMDE): With the significant caveat that our timeline is still being developed, we are expecting to have some sort of visuals completed in July 2025. We don't know yet what form those will take, e.g. if they will be similar to the WP20 graphics. Ed WMF [talk] 16:45, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: March 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: March 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 3 • March 2025
- A Whole New World: Research Findings on New Editor Integration in Serbian Wikipedia
- Bolivia: a new round of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia
- Faculty of Social Sciences Workshop in Albania
- Lots of contributions and trainings as part of Wikimedia MKD's Education Programme
- Wikimedia organized multiple events of science and education in Brazil during the month of March
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2025
[edit]
Hello, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through the exciting updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps during December, January, and February.
iOS
[edit]Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review
We released the improved version of the Year in Review to all users, now available in multiple languages and for both logged-in and logged-out users. While donation rates were lower than our goal, we saw great engagement with the feature & it brought in a higher share of first-time donors and a higher average donation compared to banner campaigns.
Notably:
- 97.4% of survey respondents rated the experience as neutral or better.
- We saw a 74% increase in new accounts, with 368 new editors actively contributing as a result.
- Most users asked for more personalized stats and a better summary of their reading journey.
We’re excited by the results and are already thinking ahead about how to improve it further next year. Want more details? You can check out the full analysis on the project page on MediaWiki.
Alt Text Experiment Wrap-Up
Our 60-day alternative text experiment has ended. While users showed interest in the task, quality was a challenge—especially for newcomers. The experiment helped us understand how we can guide editors better when writing alt text and which improvements to focus on next.
Some key takeaways:
- Completion rates were decent (28% for newer editors), but the quality of the alternative text needed improvement.
- Many users wanted clearer guidance and better context for writing alt text.
- Many users expressed interest in a dedicated feed for image-related tasks.
We’re not making the alternative text suggested edit permanent at this time. If we decided to focus on this task again, we would invest in improved guidance for writing alternative text, and make improvements to the user flow.
We made significant progress in refreshing the app’s navigation. Highlights include:
- A more native iOS feel with system-standard navigation bars.
- New access points for the Profile menu across multiple screens.
- Ongoing A/B testing of a more prominent search bar in articles, available in Arabic, French, German, and Japanese.
We also began tracking where article views come from (e.g., from Places, History, or Explore), which will help us understand user behavior better.
Tabbed Browsing Begins
We kicked off discovery and design work for adding tabs to the iOS app—one of the most requested features! Based on user feedback and inspiration from other apps, we’ve created a prototype and started user testing. Stay tuned as this exciting feature continues to evolve!
Bug Fixes & Developer Contributions
Thanks to volunteer contributions and internal efforts, we fixed several bugs including:
- Search results overlapping with the status bar.
- Crashes while editing specific articles.
- Incorrect day shown in “In the News.”
- Improved handling of italics and language variants.
Android
[edit]We released the Wikipedia Game to production in German Wikipedia and began work on WikiTrivia using “On this day” content. User feedback from initial testing is helping shape both features.
Private Donor Recognition Experiment
We wrapped up our donor recognition experiment in France and the Netherlands. While overall donations were lower than expected, user feedback was clear:
- 81% of surveyed users want the dashboard to exist on multiple platforms.
- 39% of users who saw the donor icon feature chose to personalize their app icon.
- Many users prefer automatic updates to their donor stats without manual input.
Rabbit Holes
To improve reader retention, we tested two approaches: suggested articles in search and personalized reading lists. Results showed strong engagement:
- 93.3% of feedback was positive or neutral.
- Pageviews were significantly higher for users who engaged with the feature.
- Users preferred reading lists over suggested search results.
We've started migrating our Android layouts to Jetpack Compose to modernize the app and improve performance long-term.
Other Fixes & Enhancements
- Fixed bugs related to offline article loading, push notifications, and language variants.
- Enhanced language support in captions and local language display.
Looking Ahead
From improving editing tasks to adding new ways to discover content and expanding personalization—this quarter was packed with learning and progress. Your feedback continues to shape where we go next.
Make sure you’re subscribe to this newsletter to stay in the loop, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us!
~~ARamadan-WMF07:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: April 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 4 • April 2025
- Ceremony of giving certificates and awarding the winners of the edit-a-thon: Meet Slovenia
- The Workshops Wikimedia & Education are back in Brazil
- EduWiki Nigeria: Advancing Digital Literacy in Schools
- Empowering the Next Generation: Wikidata Training at Federal Government Boys College, FGBC Abuja
- Final Wikipedia project with Shefit Hekali school in Peqin, Albania
- Teachers who graduated from the Leamos Wikipedia program in Bolivia become mentors for their colleagues
- Wikivoyage in Has region, Northern Albania
- Wikivoyage workshop in Bulqiza
This Month in GLAM: April 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: May 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 5 • May 2025
- Journalism students at Aleksandër Xhuvani University explore Wikipedia in Albania
- Reviewing pending articles editathon with high school students in Albania
- Several educational workshops to promote science on Wiki were held in Brazil in the month of May
- Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College joins the Let's Read Wikipedia Program
- Students become Editors: Wikimedia Chile launches Latin America's first Vikidia Workshop
- The DemocraTICon competition was held, this year for the first time with a discipline focused on Wikipedia
- Wikimedia MKD's "Lajka" workshop in Skopje
This Month in GLAM: May 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
Growth News #34
[edit]A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.
Mentoring new editors
[edit]In February, Mentorship was successfully rolled out to 100% of newcomers on English Wikipedia. Following this milestone, we collaborated with Spanish Wikipedia to expand Mentorship coverage to 70% of new accounts, with plans to reach 85% soon unless concerns are raised by mentors. (T394867)
“Add a Link” Task – Iteration and Experimentation
[edit]Our efforts to improve and scale the “Add a Link” structured task continued across multiple fronts:
- Community Feedback & Model Improvements: We’ve responded to community concerns with targeted changes:
- Restricting access to newer accounts (T393688)
- Some links types were removed to align with recommendations written in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style (T390683)
- Allowing communities to limit “Add a Link” to newcomers (T393771)
- The model used to suggest the links was improved to ease its training (T388258)
- English Wikipedia rollout and A/B test: We increased the rollout to 20% of newcomers, with analysis underway. Preliminary data suggests this feature makes new account holders more likely to complete an unreverted edit. (T386029, T382603)
- Surfacing Structured Tasks: An experiment where we show “add a link” suggestions to newly registered users while they are reading an article is running on pilot wikis (French, Persian, Indonesian, Portuguese, Egyptian Arabic). Initial results are under analysis. (T386029)
Newcomer Engagement Features
[edit]- “Get Started” notification: Engineering is in progress for a new notification (Echo/email) to encourage editing among newcomers with zero edits. Early research shows this type of nudge is effective. (T392256)
- Confirmation email: We are exploring ways to simplify and improve the initial account confirmation email newly registered users receive. (T215665)
Community Configuration Enhancements
[edit]Communities can now manage which namespaces are eligible for Event Registration via Community Configuration. (T385341)
Annual Planning
[edit]The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2025–2026 Annual Plan is taking shape. The Growth and Editing teams will focus on the Contributor Experiences (WE1) objective, with a focus on increasing constructive edits by editors with fewer than 100 cumulative contributions.
Get Involved
[edit]We value your insights and ideas! If you would like to participate in a discussion, share feedback, or pilot new features, please reach out on the relevant Phabricator tasks or at our talk page, in any language.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:51, 17 June 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: June 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 6 • June 2025
- Albanian high school students at the Wikimedia Youth Conference 2025 in Prague
- Bolivia has 20 new teachers graduated from the Let's Read Wikipedia in the Classroom program
- Brazil was present at the EduWiki Conference 2025 in Bogota
- Does Wikipedia has future in the times of Chat-GPT
- PhilWiki Community promotes accessible multilingual stories for children
- Reading and Editing Wikipedia in a Bangladeshi College
- Wikimedia MKD's Workshops in June
- Wikipedia meets 2500 Ukrainian educators at the country’s biggest education festival
This Month in GLAM: June 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2025
[edit]
Hello, and welcome to the second newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through exciting experiments, features, and improvements that took place in the Wikipedia mobile apps during March, April, and May.
iOS
[edit]Tabbed browsing is one of the most requested features, and we’ve made major progress this quarter:
- We finalized the designs for tabs and released the feature to Beta.
- An A/B test is planned in select languages and regions before a broader release.
- Usability testing results helped shape the experience. See our full testing analysis and interface feedback recommendations.
We launched a 30-day experiment on Chinese, French, Spanish, and Turkish Wikipedias to explore whether a centralized "Activity" space could increase user engagement.
The experiment shows the Suggested Edit “Add an image” feature to newcomers, and we hope to learn if it helps them activate and begin editing. We also hope to learn what users think about an early “Activity tab” prototype that summarizes their weekly editing, reading, and saving activity.
We’ll evaluate outcomes after 30 days.
Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review
We began backend improvements to support the next version of the Year in Review:
- The 2024 version showed strong engagement. We’re planning to integrate improved stats, collective movement insights, and recognition for donors.
- We added support for insights about reading time, link follows, and categories.
Navigation Refresh & Article Search A/B Test
We completed our test of a more prominent article search bar on four Wikipedias—French, Arabic, German, and Japanese.
- The A/B test showed a +23.8% increase in article-view search usage.
- While retention didn't shift significantly, the test gave us confidence to scale this UI improvement to all languages.
We released support for Temporary Accounts to Wikipedias where the feature is currently enabled. This helps protect IP addresses of unregistered editors.
Bug Fixes & Enhancements
Thanks to internal and volunteer efforts, we resolved:
- Incorrect date formats on Talk pages
- Alt Text keyboard overlap
- Inactive cursor on search
- Broken insert-link suggestions
Android
[edit]WikiGames & WikiTrivia Expansion
We expanded WikiGames and continued work on WikiTrivia:
- New enhancements: game archive, calendar view, score sharing, sound control to the game.
- 81.5% of players complete the game, and over half replay it on another day.
- Bug fixes include language mismatches and game crashes.
We continued migrating our UI to Jetpack Compose, including:
- MessageCardView
- LangLinksActivity
- SearchEmptyView
- WikiCardView and more
This helps modernize the app and improves long-term performance.
Rabbit Holes & Personalized Reading Lists
We completed our Rabbit Holes experiment, and began work on a permanent version of Personalized Reading Lists, tracked in this Epic ticket.
Early designs aim to make suggested reading lists more useful, personalizable, and persistent.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
We addressed:
- Talk page crashes
- Search-related language issues
- OATHAuth hyperlink bug
- On This Day incorrect year
- Samsung Galaxy S25 editing toolbar bug
- UI bugs with Picture of the Day
- Language display issues
Other Updates
- A 50-edit requirement was added to use Article Descriptions on English Wikipedia.
- We fixed pageview analytics and updated reading list icons.
Looking Ahead
From long-requested features like tabbed browsing to smarter personalization and more engaging games, this quarter was packed with progress. Your feedback continues to guide our path forward.
Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter to stay in the loop — and thank you for being part of the journey!
~~ARamadan-WMF15:34, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: July 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 7 • July 2025
- Crafting Impactful Education Newsletters: Shared Insights from EduWiki 2025
- Educational Outreach with Youth Centers in Albania
- Discussing educational resources at WikiCon Brasil 2025
- Enhancing Mobile-Friendly Contribution in Wikimedia Education Programs
- The second semester of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia with challenges and learning
- When Travel Fails, Learning Continues: A Reflection from EduWiki 2025
- Wiki club in Kumanovo - the newest Wiki club of Wikimedia MKD
- Jaroslav Mašek: How KISK FF MU students used AI to write Wikipedia
- Various programmes up and rolling with Charles University Prague
This Month in GLAM: July 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: August 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 8 • August 2025
- Bootcamp Wikipedia in Classroom
- Brazil launches campaign about Open Science on Wiki
- Breaking Barriers: Yoruba Wikipedia Fan Club Offa's Historic Wins
- Emerging Voices in Free Knowledge: The Journey of Wiki Club SATI
- From a Curious Student to a Wikimedia Leader
- From webinars to conferences: Wikimedia Ukraine’s approach to events for educators
- Higher education with Wikipedia in Spain
- Scientific Contribution from Serbia: Wikipedia in Education Research Published in a Prestigious Journal
- Teachers with Wikipedia. What if we create a Spanish-speaking collaboration network
- The brains behind Wikipedia
- Why EduWiki Should Be Considered by Policymakers
- Wikimedia Chile in Visviri: Free knowledge and education at Chile’s starting point
- Wikipedia as a tool presented at Media Education Summer School for Teachers
- Wikipedia vs AI at La Trobe University
- St Aloysius University – Wikipedia training session for newcomers
- Wiki Loves Academics, WUGN Kaduna
- In Just 3 Minutes: The Power of Wiki Education
- Sensing Cebu: Fieldnotes of an Academic as a Wiki Volunteer
This Month in GLAM: August 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
This Month in Education: September 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 9 • September 2025
- Brazil organizes seminar to discuss open science and scientific dissemination
- CBSUA Recognizes Wiki Training Completers, Awards Feminism & Folklore 2025 Winners
- 2nd International Conference on Wikimedia, Education, and Digital Cultures Mexico 2025
- Accredited seminar for teachers in Veliko Gradište
- Breaking Barriers, Why open Knowledge matters
- Cross-Continental Knowledge Exchange: Offa Youth Impact Initiative and St Aloysius University in 3D Education Outreach
- Igbo Language Audio Project in the Igbo Wiki Fan Club IMSU & Alvan
- Let's Read Wikipedia reached teachers of the Weenhayek indigenous nation in Bolivia
- Monograph on Wikipedia in the classroom, Docere Magazine
- The Third Training Course of the “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” Program in Jordan
- The Ukrainian Educators’ Wikimedia Conference 2025
- Wikimedia MKD's edit-a-thon: Lakes
- Free culture in the classroom
- Wikimedia Rwanda Wiki clubs
This Month in GLAM: September 2025
[edit]
| ||||||
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2025
[edit]In this edition, we’ll walk you through the major updates, experiments, and improvements that took place in the Wikipedia mobile apps during July, August, and September.
iOS
[edit]- In July, we released the first iteration of Tabbed Browsing to all users.
- Our 30-day A/B test showed mixed but promising results: while logged-out user retention gains were modest compared to Android, survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive (93% rated the feature “Neutral to Very Satisfactory”).
- We continued improvements throughout August and September, including a design review for “More Dynamic Tabs,” a new tab controller, and bug fixes such as inconsistent tab sizing on iPad mini and tooltip issues.
- Work continued on Year in Review upgrades, with spikes exploring features such as sharing entire reviews, custom app icons, and showing which geographies users read about the most.
- We also began preparing overall app data to share richer collective insights.
- We improved code behind the History tab and recent searches to prepare for future navigational changes.
Other iOS Updates
[edit]- Released several app versions (7.8.1 through 7.8.3), with smoke tests completed.
- Resolved numerous bugs including crashes (tooltips, gestures, search), iPad layout issues, and visual problems with captions, Quick Facts, and images in Dark Mode.
- Added a new REST endpoint for remote configuration and upgraded fundraising configurations to support A/B testing.
- Verified continued compatibility with multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Android
[edit]- In August, we launched the Customizable Donation Reminder experiment in Italy. The reminder will allow users to decide if they want to be reminded to donate, and how often.
- By September, we finalized core modules, onboarding, instrumentation, and validation tasks needed for the A/B test of the new Activity Tab against the Edit Tab.
- This marks a major step toward testing whether an Activity space can improve multi-day engagement and retention.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
[edit]- Fixed crashes with image gallery long-press, saved article syncing for Chinese, edit previews, and special links.
- Addressed rendering and Dark Mode issues affecting math tags, GIFs, and citation numbers.
Other Android Updates
[edit]- We released a new beta and conducted multiple regression tests to ensure stability.
- We added a general-purpose remote configuration REST endpoint, aligned with iOS.
- Continued technical debt cleanup, including removing allowMainThreadQueries and adding suspend to DAO functions.
- Upgraded fundraising configuration to support A/B testing.
Cross-Platform
[edit]- Both apps upgraded fundraising A/B test support and created a shared remote configuration REST endpoint.
- We began tracking Account Vanish events on iOS and Android for privacy features.
Looking Ahead
[edit]This quarter marked a big step forward on Tabbed Browsing, Activity Tab, and Year in Review — three projects aimed at making Wikipedia more personal, navigable, and engaging. We also advanced donation experiments and backend improvements to support future flexibility.
Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter to stay in the loop — and thank you for being part of the journey!
ARamadan-WMF 02:12, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Growth News #35
[edit]A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.
New releases
[edit]English Wikipedia gets "Add a Link" Structured Task
[edit]We released the "Add a Link" Structured Task to 100% of accounts at English Wikipedia on Tuesday, September 2nd (before then it was available to 20% of accounts).
Growth features for Wikidata
[edit]After examining if the Growth features and Mentorship could be adapted to Wikidata, we activated the Growth features on Beta Wikidata to allow for testing and discussion (T400937). Although some features, like Suggested Edits, are Wikipedia-specific, the Growth team designed most features to be more wiki-agnostic.
Work in progress
[edit]Revise Tone Structured Task
[edit]The Growth team is making progress on the technical architecture, onboarding design, and early user testing. We are targeting an A/B test before the end of this year, with constructive edits by newcomers as the primary success metric.
Add a link to more wikis
[edit]The machine learning team has been working on a new model that can suggest links to more languages, including Urdu, Chinese, and Japanese Wikipedias. We are starting to release the “Add a Link” feature to Wikipedias that weren’t supported by the previous model.
Add a link, which can be configured by the community locally, increases the chance that a new contributor will make their first edit and then continue to participate in Wikipedia.
Research
[edit]The Growth team is involved in several research initiatives to help guide our future work:
Progression System – We have published initial findings from interviews with 10 English and French Wikipedia newcomers. The research examined motivations, challenges, and feedback on a prototype system intended to help editors build confidence, develop skills, and contribute more constructively over time.
Mobile Web Editing Research – This project combines quantitative and qualitative data, community feedback, and user journey analysis to identify possible ways to enhance the mobile editing experience.
Newcomers Survey – This project surveys successful newcomers on English Wikipedia to understand their early editing experiences, tool use, and community interactions.
Community events
[edit]The Growth team participated in several community events to listen, share, and collaborate on improving newcomer experiences across Wikimedia projects.
Wikimania - Organizers as key partners to support newcomers' growth in our movement
This session invited organizers to share how they introduce newcomers to Growth features and the challenges they encounter. The discussion focused on common newcomer questions and opportunities to strengthen collaboration in supporting new editors.
Wikimania - Lightning Talk: Structured Tasks
This talk demonstrated how Structured Tasks help newcomers take their first successful steps on Wikipedia. It shared impact data, community configurations, and a demo of “Add a Link,” illustrating how these tasks make editing more accessible and sustainable, particularly for mobile contributors.
Wikimania - Building a Sustainable Future for Wikimedia Contributors
With active editor numbers declining, the Contributors Strategy aims to create a clearer, more engaging path for participation. This session, led by the WMF Contributors group with involvement from the Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Connection (formerly Campaigns) teams, highlighted efforts to streamline contributor experiences, offer structured and mobile-friendly workflows, and foster meaningful engagement. Participants learned about ongoing initiatives and shared feedback to help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for Wikimedia contributors.
CEE Meeting - Retaining beginners and improving content moderation: an inclusive and sustainable future for Wikipedia contributors
Many communities face a decline in volunteer engagement. Newcomers often leave soon after joining, while experienced editors struggle to manage increasingly complex workflows and overwhelming backlogs. We presented the Contributors Strategy and the different features and workflows that can help communities to address these challenges. We listened to the specific needs of the CEE communities to help guide the Contributors teams' work.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: October 2025
[edit]This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 10 • October 2025
- "WikiDonne Internship: Wikimedia Platforms for Open Education and Inclusive Culture!" winner at the Open Education Awards 2025
- A Proud Chapter in My Wikimedia Journey 🇳🇬: From Editor to Organizer
- Debating open science and scientific dissemination in Brazil
- Enhancing Academic Articles on Wikipedia with the State University of Jakarta
- India’s Students and Educators Lead the Way in the Wiki Science Competition 2025
- JDACA & Amman Arab University
- New starting page for Wikipedia users had been launched in September
- Teaching Evidence Synthesis Automation with the Wikipedia–Kaggle Dataset
- Wikimedia MKD’s Education Program activities for October
- Wikimedia Serbia prepares eight annual Edu Wiki camp
- Wikivoyage editathon in Peshkopia, Albania