User talk:NKohli (WMF)

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Hello, NKohli (WMF). Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 15:48, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Last minute call for jurors at the Wiki Science Competition

Hi, I don't if you crossed some the messages I left on wikipedia, wikidata commons and wikiveristy about this event.

I am checking with Ivo Kruusamägi from Wikimedia Estonia the composition of the final jury. We did our best to keep it balanced by continent, gender, field etc but in the end it is still a little bit eurocentric. I mean, it is good they are not all from Estonia and Italy, but of course it could have been better. Finding 15 names (and other one for more national juries) to help was not easy... I did gather some "maybes" from China and India in private that might be used next time, including people in national juries that we can promote but so far I could only reduce the gender unbalance.

I hope that the results will promote science around the globe in any case. As a last appropriate effort now that more urgent issues have been addressed and we are finalizing the main organization, I am looking all the profiles of active wikimedians from or related to Africa, South American Oceania or Asia with a possible public name and surname (jurors should be transparent) and a scientific or technological education or position. Like yours.

Would you be interested in joining us to be a juror in the second-level jury? I am sure that next time we will find new additional contacts and I will find your name not at the last minute. Of course, if we can finally get two or three new names, we can promote one of them to the final jury too.

Even you don't have time, could you help us also in promoting the event amongst people you know or mailing lists or groups you have joined? This will be also useful to promote more national juries next time.

I found your WMF username, I don't have to check if you have another SUL. I am not following the relationship with WMF, I am devoting my time to set up the juries and promotes the event amongst wikimedian. If there is any shortcircuit at the communication level, my apologies!

In any case thank you in advance.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Alexmar983:. I'd be thrilled to be on the jury if there's no restrictions about WMF employees being on the panel. I can't think of many names outside of the Foundation to nominate for the jury. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I tell Ivo for the final arrangement. In the meantime I check if you hve and create a wikidata item. Do you have another non-WMF account?--Alexmar983 (talk) 02:39, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, my non-WMF account is NiharikaKohli. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:13, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Ops I made a mistake in the small time I had to find people I only check names and towns. But d:Q42134287 is not you, you don't have a publication record. We agreed to enlarge the juries to people without publication records that have wikimedia expertise in any case, but I can't put a wikidata link to your profile. We have to add SUL link to the profile. I have to figure this out.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:52, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

In the end we had enough Indians, so I looked for more jurors from other countries. Thank you in any case. In two years when they will make an Indian competition (probably) I'll inform you again.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Copypatrol is down

Hi Niharika. Copypatrol has been down for about two hours; "Slim application error". Any help would be appredciated. Thanks, Ninja Diannaa (talk) 15:24, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Bot has stopped

The copypatrol page has no new listings for more than eight hours. I suspect the bot is down. Could you take a look please when you get a chance? Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 23:30, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't seem down anymore, is it? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

It is was working again. I don't know if it re-started on its own or if someone fixed it. But now it appears to have stopped again, as there's been no new reports for 4.5 hours. I have also alerted User:ערן at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 13:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me that the last record is from ~25 minutes ago. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Reports have resumed posting at the normal rate as of 17:26. I will continue to monitor. Ninja Diannaa (talk) 18:49, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I still have a bad feeling that something is wrong. There's been no new reports for five hours, and there's normally three to five every hour. Diannaa (talk) 21:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I think you're right. No new records since a long while. This is troubling. I've created a ticket to look at this (phab:T183913). Hopefully we'll find a fix for it quickly enough. Thanks for reporting. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi again. The bot seems to have stopped again. There's been no new reports for twelve hours. Any assistance you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: I'm looking into this. I'm not sure what's wrong but I think Eran's bot might have stopped working. There was a maintenance reboot for Labs tools yesterday. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: This is a bigger problem that what happened in previous cases. I have filed a ticket here: task T185163 and am awaiting Eran's response on it. He's the author of Eranbot (which is used by CopyPatrol to get records) and he's the only one familiar with how that bot actually works. I'll keep you updated on the progress. Thanks for alerting me. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:20, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 07:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Community Tech bot for Vietnamese Wikipedia

Hi NKohli, I was lead to your talk page via the guide at en:User:Community Tech bot. If this wrong place to ask request, please forgive me :-). Could you please support a database report as Wikipedia:Database reports for Vietnamese Wikipedia (I mean only the list of pages you supporting as listed at en:User:Community Tech bot. This tool will help us very much in community advocate and more. Thank you in advanced! --minhhuy ^(talk) 08:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello! This is the right place for your request. I can definitely set up the database reports for Vietnamese wikipedia. Note that not all of the reports there would work out of the box on Vietnamese, for example PRODed articles one. Rest of them should work but I'll have to look at the code to verify. The bot will need operating permissions on the wiki. Also, you need to tell me a few things-

• What's the master page going to be titled? Like on English it is "Wikipedia:Database reports".
• What are the respective titles for each of the reports going to be? (So I can put the reports on that page under the master page)
• Translations for the report descriptions

I'll let you know if I think of anything else. Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much, about the preparation for bot tasks, I will explain here:

• vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu (as for Wikipedia:Database reports) is the master page.
• We gonna have 4 reports for now (temporary), those are:

Vietnamese page	English title alternative	Translation of elements
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Bài viết theo kích cỡ	Articles by size	* For description: Các bài viết theo tổng kích cỡ, chủ yếu trong không gian tên chính. For table headers: Namespace = Không gian tên Article = Bài viết Taille = Độ dài
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Bài viết được sửa nhiều lần nhất trong tháng vừa qua	Most edited articles last month	* For description: Các bài viết theo số lần sửa đổi trong 30 ngày vừa qua, giới hạn trong 25 bài được sửa nhiều nhất. For table headers: Title = Tên bài Revisions = Số phiên bản
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Thành viên tích cực có lịch sử đóng góp lâu đời nhất (per 50-earliest created, not 200 as English Wikipedia as the situation of Vietnamese Wikipedia)	Active editors with the longest-established accounts	* For description: 50 tài khoản người dùng được mở sớm nhất tích cực sửa đổi trong 30 ngày vừa qua. For table headers: Username = Tên người dùng Date created = Ngày mở tài khoản Approx. edit count = Số sửa đổi xấp xỉ
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Số trang theo không gian tên	Page count by namespace	* For description: Số trang theo từng không gian tên. For table headers: Namespace ID = ID không gian tên Namespace = Không gian tên Total pages = Tổng số trang Pages with redirects = Trang đổi hướng Pages without redirects = Trang không đổi hướng For the name of each namespaces, I think it already on the Vietnamese database?

• About the bot permission, Vietnamese Wikipedia don't have a standard bot policy, and because the Community Tech bot will run frequency only for these database reports, it unnecessary for a bot flag. But in the case you still need a flag, you could ask request at vi:Wikipedia:Robot/Yêu cầu cấp quyền (the page is actually low-traffic since our bureaucrat only 2 people, all busy :^))

If you need anything more please let me know. Thank you very much again! --minhhuy ^(talk) 04:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for all the information! I will work on this soon. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello minhhuy, I've made the community tech bot to add the database report on the pages you've mentioned. The reports on these pages will be updated on a weekly basis. Let us know if you have any questions! Also, in this process, I made the bot to create this page by mistake and I don't have the rights to request its deletion. It would be great if you could help delete it. Thanks! SSethi (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

The bot has stopped

Hello Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot appears to have stopped; there's been no new reports for about four hours, and the iThenticate links are failing to load. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Diannaa. I'm looking into it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

It seems like iThenticate is experiencing some issues. We should just wait for it to recover. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

user:virajmishra

Hello niharika ji mai shahdol madhya pradesh se hu mera khata global lock hai kya karu mai ab to mera khata global unlock ho. 2405:204:E709:BEDE:1F1A:913E:CAD5:2C9C 16:41, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

5 remarks

Hello,
I have 5 remarks:

• I thank you very much. With Phabricator, I have seen that you have done a lot of work as a consequence of my wish . This is great.

Thanks for writing up that wish! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, some logs are still under discussion. Do you know when they will be discussed?

You can comment on the ticket if there are log types you think should be thank-able but aren't currently. At the moment, the process is that we consult the Anti-Harassment and/or the Support & Safety teams on what should and should not be thankable. If there's a log type you want us to make thank-able, please comment on the ticket and we can discuss. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, I have read all the details, but I do not understand the hesitations about the block + gblblock logs. What do you think about my remarks in Talk:Community Tech/Thanks notification for log entries#Why exclude the Block log?

I believe the reason we did not include block log entries as thankable was that they can encourage negative behavior and potentially lead to trolling. I read your remarks in the thread you link to. Would you like to state your case in the ticket again so other people who have expressed concerns about this can reply and we can have a discussion about it there? Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, where is the log associated to the edit of a topic summary of a structured discussion? In this example I have noticed that I was unable to thank for this action.

Currently only resolving and unresolving a Structured Discussion topic is possible. I'd be happy to look into thanking for edits to topic summary. It's on my to-do list. I'll get back to you on this. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, I have seen the log type "close" for "flow-close-topic & flow-restore-topic" and the log type "lock" for "Structured discussions topic resolve/unresolve log". I have looked at Phab:T191482 and at this example in the public logs. I see the 'thank link' in this example, but I think that the community does not know about this possibility. Nobody has planified to add this 'thank link' in the corresponding topic's history? Moreover, the line "22:39, 4 April 2018..." can be found in the example in the public logs, but I have not found the exact corresponding log. For instance, I have not found this line in the threaded discussion log. It seems that the menu "All the public logs" does not really show all the public logs?

The log you are looking at is the threaded discussion log which is different from Structured Discussions (flow) logs. Threaded discussion refers to LiquidThreads which are no longer in use. It seems like there is no dedicated log stream for structured discussion logs and hence is only appears in "All public logs" only. You are right that the thank link only appears in the logs and not in the history because we did not want to flood the history pages with thank links and we felt that having the link in the logs would suffice for the purpose of this wish. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Regards --NicoScribe (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching out NicoScribe. I was on vacation for a couple of weeks. I'll get back to you with a reply soon. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@NicoScribe: I replied inline. Sorry about the delay on this. Have a nice day! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much. No problem for the delay.

I have transferred my remarks about the thanks into Phab:T60485 and Phab:T191482. But I have little experience in Phabricator: I hope that I have made no mistake. For instance: I have mentioned a comment from MGChecker, so I suppose that MGChecker will receive a notification?

The fact that the menu "All the public logs" shows all the actions but does not list all the public logs is another problem. Is it a known problem? Is there a Phabricator task about it? --NicoScribe (talk) 09:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

You have done it correctly. MGChecker will receive a notification, yes. For your question about "All public logs" not really showing all logs - I don't know why it's the case. I looked for tickets and found task T157218 but that doesn't seem to address the fact that structured discussion logs don't show up in all logs even though they are public. I think it has something to do with how structured discussions works. I'll ask my colleagues about it and file a ticket if there isn't one. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

CopyPatrol: 502 Bad Gateway

Hi NKohli. I'm getting a 502 bad gateway error when I try to open https://tools.wmflabs.org/copypatrol/en. This has been going on for around two hours. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks! Diannaa (talk) 20:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Diannaa:. I am able to access CopyPatrol fine. I am getting some error reports about CopyPatrol going down every now and then for a few minutes. The most likely cause is that ToolForge is doing some reboots on the backend which will last another few hours. Sorry about the inconvenience caused. Thanks for letting me know. I'm keeping an eye on it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I have been able to access the page again as of about half an hour ago, but it has yet to post any new reports since 2018-06-06 18:18. I had an old version saved in an open tab so was able to clear some old reports in the meantime. Earwig's tool was down for a while too earlier today. Diannaa (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

My suspicion is that it was down due to the ToolForge reboots as well. I see new reports coming in now on CopyPatrol. We might have missed some due to the issues though, unfortunately. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry but that's incorrect. There's been no new reports since 2018-06-06 18:18 (6 hours ago). Diannaa (talk) 00:38, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry. You are absolutely right. There aren't new records in the interface. The good news is that I do see new records in the database but they are not showing up for some reason. I am investigating this. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi again, Diannaa. The problem has now been fixed but I was wrong about the records being saved in the database. New records are now being generated. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 21:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 1

Newsletter • July 2018

Welcome to the first issue of the Timeless newsletter! This issue is being sent or forwarded to everyone who has at some point expressed an interest in the project, give or take, as well as a couple of other potentially relevant pages, so if you would like to continue (or start) receiving this newsletter directly, please sign up for further updates on the meta page.

The news:

The Timeless grant has been selected for funding, and the project is now underway!

While I've had a somewhat slow start working on the project for health reasons, I'm pleased to announce that everything described in the proposal is now either happening, or on its way to happening.

Current progress:

• The project now has a hub on Meta to serve as a directory for the various related pages, workboards, and local discussions and help pages. It's probably incomplete, especially with regards to specific language projects that might have local pages for Timeless, so if you know of others, please add them!
• Outreach: I've been talking to various people and groups directly about skinning, desktop/mobile interfaces, project management, specific component support, and other things, and have begun to compile a very shoddy list of skinning problems and random issues on mw.org based on this. Some of this may inform the direction of this project, or possibly this project will result in building a more proper list that can then be used for other things. We shall see.
• Some development - task triage, code review, bug fixing, and various rabbit holes involving ...overflows.

General plan for the future:

• Triage the rest of the workboard.
• Catch up with all the talkpages and other bug reports that have been left various other places that are not the project workboard
• Do all the bug fixes/features/other things!
• Some proposals aimed at Commons and Wikisource in particular (maybe, we'll see)

Essentially, the grant as written shall be carried out. This was the plan, and remains the plan. Timelines remain fuzzy, but while there have been some initial delays, I don't particularly expect the timeline for project as a whole to change a whole lot.

Also, for anyone at Wikimania right now: I am also at Wikimania. Come talk to me in person!

Thank you all for your interest and support thus far!

-— Isarra ༆ 12:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

This issue has been sent regardless of signup status. To receive future issues please add yourself on the massmessage list.

Latest message for Collaboration team newsletter; Growth team's newsletter invite

Hello

Sorry to use English if that's not your favorite language.

You are receiving this message because you were reading the Collaboration team newsletter.

The Collaboration team doesn't longer exists. That team was working on building features that encourage collaboration. This is the latest message for that newsletter.

The Growth Team, formed in July 2018, supports some former Collaboration projects. The Growth Team's main objective is to ease new editors' first steps on wikis, through software changes. You can discover all objectives and missions of the Growth team on its page.

If you wish to be informed about Growth team's updates about easing new users first steps, you can subscribe to the new list to get updates. The first message from Growth –with a call for feedback on a new project– will be posted in a few days!

If you have questions or you want to share experiences made on your wiki about new users' first steps, please post them on the team talk page, in any language.

On behalf of the Growth team, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #1

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.

Problems with Copypatrol

Hi Niharika. I am experiencing issues with CopyPatrol. I can't get the iThenticate reports to load. Also, there was a large gap with no new reports generated from 02:01 to 07:33, which was in the evening in North America when there is typically a lot of editing happening. Sometimes the report loads, but extremely slowly. I can't tell if the problem is at their end or or at our end. Diannaa (talk) 11:07, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Adding: We've had no new reports added for 4.5 hours, so the bot appears to have stopped. Diannaa (talk) 13:09, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for alerting me. It seems like the bot is working now. I am able to see the ithenticate reports. Does the issue still persist for you? From your description, it seems like the issue was on iThenticate's end. The don't seem to have a way for us to know when their service is down (they used to have something) so it's hard to know for sure. Do let me know if this happens again. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Normal activity appears to have resumed. Reports are being posted at CopyPatrol, and iThenticate report are loading, perhaps a little slower than normal. I agree it was probably an issue on their end this time. Thanks for having a look. Diannaa (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

The bot appears to have stopped again. No new reports for three hours. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 03:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Eran re-started the bot at around 03:16, 29 August 2018 and there's been only one new report since then. I was wondering if you should contact iThenticate and see if there's an issue at their end? Or is the problem at our end? Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 12:34, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I checked in on the tool and it seems like ToolForge (the platform on which CopyPatrol runs) was down for maintenance for a few hours. I see new reports coming in now so hopefully the problem is now fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

CopyPatrol should not be indexed

Hi Niharika. I was surprised to find the CopyPatrol pages are not NOINDEXed. Google searching usernames such as "Natstaropoli" and "RMGroup17" revealed this fact. I would appreciate it if this page did not appear in Google search results, as it could become a target for vandalism. Any assistance you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa. Sorry for the late reply. I'll look into this request. Thanks for reaching out. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: the awesome MusikAnimal went ahead and did this super fast. I hope the problem is fixed/will be fixed pretty soon once the config is picked up by the crawler(s). -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

It seems to be working. Thank you, and thanks to MusikAnimal as well. Diannaa (talk) 17:40, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Note

Hello, NKohli (WMF). You have new messages at Talk:CopyPatrol.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

CopyPatrol has stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 02:28 UTC October 1), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. I wonder if the iThenticate website is down, or if there's something happening at our end that we can fix. Thanks for any assistance you can offer. Diannaa (talk) 13:00, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm looking into it. Thanks for reporting. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Eran reports that there's something wrong with our iThenticate account and we need to get it re-enabled. Diannaa (talk) 19:23, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I realised. I hope we can get it back up soon. I'll keep an eye on updates. Thanks again. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Eran has now re-started the bot and normal activity has resumed at CopyPatrol. Thank you, Diannaa (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Niharika. The bot appears to have stopped again. There's been no new reports for nearly 7 hours. Thanks for any assistance. Diannaa (talk) 03:43, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I see no recent requests have been made to Turnitin. Eran do you have any idea about this? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:45, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I think it run the bot without timeout flag earlier this week. I restarted it, should be working now. eranroz (talk) 06:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #2

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.

Grant Metrics tool

Hi Niharika, I am writing this message to know about Grant Metrics tool. I would like to know whether the tool has been fully developed, its readiness for usage and whether it has been officially launched for use. Thanks, KCVelaga (talk) 09:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@KCVelaga: Hello! Grant Metrics tool is under active development at the moment. We are going to be adding more features to the tool over the next couple months. You should be able to use the tool in its current state though. It has the ability to generate some standard statistics for a given set of participants on a given wiki during a given time period. We recently added ability to filter the edits by category too. The tool has been officially given the go ahead for being used by the communities. We have several Wikimedia chapters and event organizers using the tool currently.

The tool is on track to being renamed to Event Metrics in the near term. We'll be including some ways to download detailed reports about the edits that took place during the event. We will also be adding some more metrics in future. I hope this helps. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have more questions or run into problems with the tool. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): Thanks for quick and detailed response. I've got a chance to use and test the tool yesterday. It looks quite good. But I would like to know more about the difference between the existing "Programs and Events Dashboard" and this tool. They almost generate the same metrics. If you're planning to add more features to it (especially which the community wants), it'll be even more awesome. I suggest doing a survey with the WMF grantees and check what they're in need of. If you've done this already, that is great. Thanks, KCVelaga (talk) 15:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@KCVelaga: Grant Metrics is meant to be simpler to use with a focus on events that community organizers run. The Dashboard has a bigger focus on classroom workflows whereas Grant Metrics is built with the sole purpose of getting metrics which event organizers are interested in. It's also officially supported by Wikimedia Foundation while the Dashboard is supported by WikiEd Foundation. This project is now being run by JMatazzoni (WMF) actually. He's already done a fair bit of consultation with the community on this page. Your thoughts on what metrics would be useful for events you organize (or other use cases) would be very welcome on that page. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:54, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): Thanks for clarifying, and directing me to the link. It is quite helpful to understand more about this tool. KCVelaga (talk) 15:36, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Problem with CopyPatrol

Hi Niharika. I am having a problem with CopyPatrol: I am getting an error message when I scroll down to the bottom of the page and try to load additional items. The message reads "An unknown error occurred when loading results. Please try again." Diannaa (talk) 22:23, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for flagging this. We made some fixes to the tool which caused this. We will fix this as soon as possible. I will keep you informed. Thanks for letting me know. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Diannaa (talk) 00:15, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

This has been fixed since. Let me know if it happens again. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #3

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

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.

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.

wishlist

sorry, I missed the deadline of the discussion phase of the wishlist survey to change the name of the stereoskopie proposal. Can I still change the name? (and how? just do a move of the proposal page, or is there more to think of?) --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 05:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@°: That's okay. We can still rename it. I can rename it on your behalf. Do you know what you will rename it to? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

How about "Present 3D content in a stereoscopic view"? --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 20:55, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Done! Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I only now noticed that the 360degree proposal has been entered again in this year. I had hoped to merge my propoal with the 360-proposal last year, but got no reply from the proposer. This year this proposal comes with a 3D/360 example picture (that seems new to me). Now it does make even less sense not to merge the proposals. As I am sceptic, that contacting the proposer by me will have any more effect than last year, is there anything you can still do about it? It would be bad, if the proposals cancel each other out in the voting, as the problems and solutions are very similar. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 18:52, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@°: I agree it makes sense to merge the proposals. Would you rather merge your proposal into 360 photo viewing one or the other way around? I can talk to them and help merge it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I tried to conntact the other proposer in the past, maybe you have more luck. As the voting will start soon, I think it best to merge it to "present 3D and panoramic content in adequate ways like viewing in stereoscopic view". I trust you to make the needed changes to the text, you know I am not after a specific implementation, but a good solution for displaying 3D, 180degree, 360degree media. I drafted my proposal in autumn 2016, by now the MW software has been devoloped in various ways, so it is up to the wishlist team to adapt both proposals to the state of the software. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 10:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

° I think calling it present 3D and panoramic content in adequate ways like viewing in stereoscopic view is a mouthful. People are less likely to understand and click on it. Support 360 photo viewing is shorter and more easily understood. @Ahm masum, TheDJ, and MichaelSchoenitzer: - what do you think about merging 360 photo viewing and Present 3D content in a stereoscopic view proposals? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): ; I think "Suppot 3D & 360° photo viewing" would be appropriate .In this way these proposals CAN'T cancel each other in the voting phase. but the "Proposed solution" section must have to contain the both "solution's" .

1. from my perspective @Gradzeichen's "Proposed solution" will be too much for wiki tech team to Fully Implement.
2. the work for 360° is already 50% done , but the support for 3D/VR content didn't even start yet.
3. @Gradzeichen's want jps , sbs and ttb file format support . even though i also want these badly ; but please face the reality.we won't see this kind of implementation until 2020-2021....

what do you say @TheDJ: , @AKlapper (WMF):......TRHANKS EVERYONE --- Ahm masum (talk) 19:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Development of Blame Tool

is complete? Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 07:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: My apologies. That's incorrect. We're yet to begin work on that project. Thanks for pointing it out! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:17, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #4

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:

1. 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.
2. 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

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.

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.

Copypatrol bot has stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 2019-01-05 15:47), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. The iThenticate website was down for maintenance for a while, but it's back up now. Perhaps there's something happening at our end that we can fix? Thanks for any assistance you can offer. I have also posted at Eran's talk page. Diannaa (talk) 21:07, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Normal activity has resumed. Thank you :) Diannaa (talk) 01:34, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #5

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

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

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

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?

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.

CopyPatrol page will not load; Earwig's copyvio detector also will not load

Hi Niharika. Earwig's copyvio detector tool will not load, nor will Eran's CopyPatrol. Copypatrol stopped working at around 03:02 UTC. Earwig's tool was down for at least half an hour before that and possibly longer (I can't say for sure, because that's what time I started my editing session). Earwig's tool has been having issues on and off for a few days already. I've already posted at en:User talk:The Earwig and en:User talk:ערן. In fact while I was composing this message I discovered that Labs is down completely: 500 - Internal Server Error. If you could investigate that would be great. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 04:23, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Toolforge, which hosts both of those tools, is experiencing severe problems. You can sead the announcement here. They expect it to last a few more hours at the very least. :( Sorry for the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Niharika. CopyPatrol is currently working, so hopefully I will be able to stay caught up. Some cases can't be resolved without Earwig's tool but I will leave those aside for now. Diannaa (talk) 19:55, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello again. Some parts of the Tools hosted at Labs are working again. I have contacted Eran to try re-starting the bot but I thought I should let you know as well in case you can get the CopyPatrol page working again (at least temporarily). Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

It actually looks like Eran's bot is running, but the page where the results are reported (https://tools.wmflabs.org/copypatrol/en) is still producing a "500 - Internal Server Error". Diannaa (talk) 21:33, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Hi Niharika.CopyPatrol is working, at least intermittently, but the "Load More" button at the bottom of the page is not working. If this problem could be repaired that would be great. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 13:59, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, I just caught up on my notifications. It seems like some of the backend issues with tools-database have been resolved. Per my testing it seems like the "Load More" button is functioning fine now. Do you still see the problem? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

It started working properly shortly after I posted here. Somebody either saw my post or fixed it on their own as part of the clean-up. So everything is working well right now, and has been for a couple hours. Hopefully the worst is over! Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 19:53, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the memory. I do not have much time, but maybe I will be interested in the matter. Greetings from Poland. MOs810 (talk) 08:20, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #6

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

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

Mockup of potential design for newcomer homepage

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

Screenshot from Vietnamese Wikipedia showing the help panel open on the Community Portal, including the "search" bar.

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)

Bot stopped

Hi Niharika, just a note to let you know the copypatrol bot has stopped - there's been no new reports added since 01:02 (eleven hours ago). I have also posted at Eran's talk page. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you, Diannaa (talk) 12:11, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Just passing by. It looks there's a problem with Toolforge cron jobs. A report can be found at task T218649. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 12:51, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

The bot has stopped again. No new reports since 13:17 on March 21 (8 hours ago). If you could find out what's happening that would be great. I will cross-post at Eran's talk page. Thank you, Diannaa (talk) 21:44, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I scanned the report, which is suggesting that the problem is fixed, maybe. It isn't.--Sphilbrick (talk) 12:46, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Is anyone working on this? An update would be appreciated. Diannaa (talk) 11:51, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

T21869 seems to be resolved but problems are still occuring. Opening a ticket; which is the best way to elicit attention.Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 18:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa:--I've opened task T219213. Regards, Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 19:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, Diannaa, I was on vacation for a few days. I have pinged Eran and am following on the ticket. The problem lies with Eranbot and not CopyPatrol so there's not much I can do about fixing this myself. My apologies about the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #7

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

Screenshot of newcomer homepage in Test Wikipedia, in English.

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".

Mockups for potential designs of mobile homepage

Recent and future homepage development

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

• 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.

16:19, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019

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)

Labs is down, or partially down

I am having issues accessing https://tools.wmflabs.org/copypatrol/en, getting an error "HTTP error 500" message. Some of the other pages on Labs are not working, for example these ones are not working:

• https://tools.wmflabs.org/admin/tools
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/rangecontribs/index.php?
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/rangecontrib/
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/autoblock/index.php

Any assistance in getting this fixed would be appreciated. Cross-posting here from en:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Labs_is_down,_or_partially_down Thank you, --Diannaa (talk) 13:12, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Update: Some of the tools are working again, including CopyPatrol. I'll let you know if further problems arise. Diannaa (talk) 13:44, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Excuse me

Please, can you unblock my account on English Wikipedia? --Humanist920 (talk) 09:18, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Humanist920, NKohli (WMF) is not an administrator on the English Wikipedia. You should ideally appeal your block at English Wikipedia, not on Meta Wiki. — FR 09:25, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@Humanist920: see w:Wikipedia:UTRS  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:11, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Event metrics : loading online event

Dear Niharika

I have created an event WLW Women in Sport in the Event metrics space for this online event that I want to launch on the 1st June Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Loves Women/Women in Sport. I am probably being a bit dense, but I cannot see how to compile the relevant categories across the various elements en.wp, fr.wp, wikidata, and commons. I am not sure how to capture entering a few categories will collect all of the changes done by participants and the name of those who have participated. Any ideas? Even just capturing some of the changes (say, WikiData or Commons) would be great ... All ideas are welcome!

If I have come to the wrong person, I apologise. Please head me in the correct direction! Thank you for your attention to this! Islahaddow (talk) 18:21, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

@Islahaddow: Hello! When you click into the event, you have the option of adding categories and relevant wikis for those categories. When you enter those and save, you can then generate the statistics. You can then download this data and open it in a spreadsheet to get all the data. Does this help? :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): - Sadly, no. I can see how to add the Wikis that are affected, which I have done. I am unsure what categories to add. So on the page I linked above, there is a Listeria bot created list pulling in information from WikiData, English Wikipedia and Commons. The participant is encouraged to add information to either of those options. What category do I use in order to keep all of the changes that are made across all of those projects recorded for this Women in Sport drive? I am hoping you have the answer, but I understand that it is not a usual request ...! Islahaddow (talk) 18:36, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

@Islahaddow: does this page answer your question? The categories have to exist on the wiki. They are not automatically created by the tool. The tool looks for pages in those categories to generate the statistics. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 06:07, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Omg !!! You are working on svgTranslate !

Hello NKohli, I'am the French wikipedian, we took the taxi in Prague together. I just noticed you are revamping SVGtranslate ! Thanks you so much ! I've been involved with it back in 2008, pushing it everywhere. So nice to see it get some cares it deserves. Thank you ! Yug (talk) 23:00, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Yug! We have done a bunch of work on SVG Translate. The version is available to try here. If you get a chance to try it, I would be happy to hear your feedback. It has some bugs and is not perfect but it works much better than the previous tool. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 05:47, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Great. Let me spread the word to the relevant portals (en:WP:Graphic Lab, fr:WP:Atelier graphique, etc.) ^^ Yug (talk) 15:42, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

English, French, German, Spanish, Italian wikigraphists communities just got a Beta release notice. They are the main ones. As of now it seems enough.

Commons graphic lab, Turkey and others labs may need to be informed later on. Thanks again to your team, please bring our thanks up to the organizers and developers as well. <3 Yug (talk) 16:17, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

@Yug: Thank you for spreading the word!! I will pass on your thanks to the team! :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

When you officially release it and want more massive impact, wee need to add the link back to Commons {{Translation possible}}. See how this template was when SVGtranslate v1 was operating (+ a funny wiki-history gem XD).

The template is protected so only admins can edit it (do you know one ?), yet we still can push for this template to be edited. Yug (talk) 06:20, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Great, thanks Yug! I don't know any admins personally but I am sure people will be willing to help out when the app is stable enough for that. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #8

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

• 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

A newcomer homepage on Czech Wikipedia (displayed in English language)

• 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

Mockup of mobile newcomer homepage

• 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

• 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)

CopyPatrol stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 14:37 UTC July 13), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. I wonder if the iThenticate website is down, or if there's something happening at our end that we can fix. Thanks for any assistance you can offer. This is the same as the issue I reported in October 2018. I will also post on Eran's talk at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 17:08, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Update: Normal activity has resumed. I'll let you know if it doesn't last! Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 20:14, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi again Niharika. The bot has stopped again; no new reports since 13:25 on July 21 (8 hours ago). Cross posting to Eran's talk at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 21:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

The bot is still down. Is there anybody that can take a look? user:MusikAnimal sometimes helps. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2019 (UTC) user:MusikAnimal (WMF) Diannaa (talk) 19:26, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for the ping. I'm alerting the team about it. We'll look into it asap. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 20:08, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Doc James, Eranroz It looks like we ran out of the quota again. Can someone please ping Turnitin to update the credits again? The tool won't function until that happens. :( -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

User:Diannaa and User:NKohli (WMF) Okay thanks for the heads up. Will email them right now. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Normal activity has resumed. Thanks Dr H. Diannaa (talk) 18:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #9

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

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

Indicator that encourages users to look at their Notifications for responses to their questions

• 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

Button to help newcomers find their homepage from their empty Contributions page

• 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)

Copypatrol stopped, again

Hello again. The bot seems to have stopped again, as there's been no new reports since 20:53, 2019-08-15 (over two hours ago). If you could have a look that would be great. I have cross-posted at Eran's talk page at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 23:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Reports are comning in again, so it looks like we're okay for now. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 11:20, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Diannaa. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello again. The bot seems to have stopped again, as there's been no new reports since 19:52, 2019-08-28 (around 3 hours ago). I will also post at Eran's talk page at en.wiki. Diannaa (talk) 22:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa:, thanks for the report. I will ping IFried (WMF) who is actually overseeing the team that built CopyPatrol now. She should be able to get someone to look at it relatively quickly. Thanks for reporting this. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, I will contact her to find out what will be the best way to communicate with her in the future. And thanks again for the many times you've assisted in the past! Best, Diannaa (talk) 00:29, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa: You are very welcome! It was always a joy to be able to help. Please don't hesitate to reach out again if anything needs attention from me or WMF. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/header

Hi, IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/header is actually fine as it's now after your edits. In my edit I mistakenly forgot to close the div tag. Stryn (talk) 18:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks Stryn. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #10

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

• 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

Opening panel in the Community Growth space

• 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:
  • Notes and learnings from Wikimania
  • Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
  • Slides from Growth team presentation
• 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!

Mockup of newcomer tasks

• 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

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

• 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

Mockup of guidance while doing a suggested edit, using the help panel

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

Mockup of topic matching in newcomer tasks

• 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)

page was moved -- what to do to update properly?

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Social_Work/Popular_pages listed LDS Family Services which is now Family Services. I changed the display name -- will the bot pick that up and change the relevant link or should I have changed that as well? Or should I have left it alone completely to change on its own? Or will it not matter that I made a change because the bot will rewrite everything next month? See my relevant edits at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Social Work/Popular pages and Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Popular pages Banaticus (talk) 22:04, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I believe the bot will pick up the change itself. If it does not by next round, let me know and I'll look into it. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #12

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

• 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

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

Suggested edits by type of edit.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits

• 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

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

Prototype of how the help panel will "peek" from the bottom of the page to offer guidance on mobile.

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)

Coronation - COVID-19

Hi NKohli (WMF) I am trying to find out who inserted a wikilink to Coronation into the User talk:Headbomb page. I saw this link listed at the top of What links here of that page, and was curious why when and who inserted it.

I am asking you because on 21 February 2019 you posted a message on my talkpage asking me to comment on an "an early-stage mockup" of the wmf-version of enwiki's wikiblame. I therefore assume you know about how to use this tool? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 17:06, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: The tool you mention has been built (see the documentation page on mediawiki). Unfortunately it doesn't work for talk pages. The way it works is by storing a page model in the database for every change made to the page and it will need a lot more storage capacity than is available in order to enable it to work on all namespaces. You can ask about it in more detail on the project talk page.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Feel free to reach out if I can help with anything else. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

phab:T189717

Hi Niharika! I was engaged in an off-wiki discussion about the English Wikipedia's blocks of T-Mobile ranges, and mentioned that blocked users are shown this very helpful template to help them create an account to contribute. I was directed to this screenshot, showing the complete block message that affected users see: none of the wikimarkup is treated as wikimarkup, and is less than useless. Potential editors affected, who probably do not know wikimarkup, how the template namespace works, or how to go to the request an account page, are basically unable to get help and edit. The ticket linked as the header for this section was created over two years ago, and I couldn't possibly estimate the amount of potential editors turned away by this bug in that time. I understand that it seems unclear as to what team should handle this, but in my view it is more important to simply work on it with haste regardless as it's alienating a very large group of potential contributors from editing, especially considering the relatively recent merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, meaning that another 54 million people (Sprint's pre-merge customer base) are now (or will soon be) using T-Mobile's negligent and backwards way of assigning IPs, thus affected by the blocks. Thank you, Vermont (talk) 23:56, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #13

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

Sketch of an idea for a structured workflow for adding links to an article. The goal is to help newcomers edit at high volume.

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

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

39 topics are now available for newcomer tasks

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)

WikiProject Hospitals popular pages

I am not seeing the Popular pages for the WikiProject Hospitals. Should it not have been generated by now? --G. Moore (talk) 13:00, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

A humble applicant looking for advice

Hi Niharika!

I hope you don't mind me reaching out. I'm applying for a PM role at the WMF and I'm trying to get some advice from existing PM's on what I can do to make my application stand out.

Working at WMF is quite a dream for me (as I'm sure it is for many), so any little piece of advice counts!

Cheers, Itko

Hi Itko. Could you please email me at niharika@wikimedia.org? I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter 14

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

The star on this image is the week we deployed "guidance".

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

Design concept for the "add a link" structured task

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

Mockup of Variant D of the homepage on desktop.

• 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

• 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).

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09:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #15

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

Variant D in Portuguese Wikipedia

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

Concept A for add a link.

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

• 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?

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10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16

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

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

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

Mentors are volunteers ready to help newcomers in their first steps. Newcomers can contact them using the mentorship module on their homepage.

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

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

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14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17

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

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

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

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

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.

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16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #18

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

A screenshot of "add a link" feature in development in beta.

"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

Mockup of the Mentor dashboard.

• 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

Community configuration editing form under development

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

• 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.

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15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

IP Masking

Hi NKohli, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to offer myself as a resource for the IP masking changes, especially with respect to the IP info feature. While I'm not a checkuser, I have a fair amount of experience dealing with IPs, both as an enwiki administrator and proxy checker. To be honest, I'm not happy with IP masking, but it's been made clear that some form of it will be coming, like it or not; I want to do my part in helping make sure that whatever the end product is, it's something our volunteers can use. If there are any questions I can answer, tools I can test-drive, anything like that, please let me know - I would be happy to help. Best, GeneralNotability (talk) 01:13, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability Thank you so much. I am really glad to see this. IP masking is a difficult project and we need support from experienced people like yourself for it to happen as smoothly as possible.

I will reach out to you when we do the next round of testing on the tool. In the meantime, if you could keep an eye on the project page, that would be helpful. Your comments on the project talk page have been helpful already. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

IP banning

Hi. I mentioned ACTRIAL and you reminded me that you were part of the team. Do you think there is any chance, just in case we need it, of DannyH (WMF) and Nettrom already drawing up a list of hypotheses for testing on en.Wiki? Based on a pretest sample of six months before a trial, and then a six mnonth trial? Kudpung (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Kudpung. My apologies for the late response -- I missed your note.

I think you are talking about the IP editing ban, please correct me if I am wrong. Can you give me a little more detail about what kind of hypotheses are you thinking of, for enwiki? Danny and Nettrom are both in different teams now but we can definitely consult them about this project and get some of their insights. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Niharika. I am indeed talking about the IP editing ban, especially where the Farsi Wikipedia is also now following up the Portuguese success with a trial. I believe that interest will continue to grow among the encyclopedia projects. The English Wikipedia is unique because it is not country based. It is the only fully cross-cultural Wikipedia spanning huge social differences such as from India where English is the official second language, to the US. These social dichotomies need to be taken into account when making any radical changes to what many perceive as 'founding principles'.

These principles are however idealistic rather than pragmatic, and the resounding success of ACTRIAL proved yet again that the requirements of the volunteers who do the work are more founded on empirical experience than anecdotal evidence. For ACTRIAL which I pioneered and shepherded for many years until it finally became reality, Nettrom came up with an excellent catalogue of hypotheses to be proven or disproven by a trial. It worked extremely well and I think that those same hypotheses could be adopted and adapted for an eventual IP Ban Trial for the en.Wiki.

I'm not saying that there is a need yet to propose an IP Ban for debate at the en.Wiki community but with IP Cloaking in the horizon, the community is certainky going to debate the possibility sooner or later and it would be good to be prepared. I would be happy to work with you and Nettrom to draw up a set of hypotheseses. This might even interest GeneralNotability and DarwIn. Kudpung (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung I like the idea of drawing up the hypotheses. We are currently gauging the impact of the ban on Farsi Wikipedia. We will hopefully be able to draw some useful inferences from that study but like you said, English is unlike most other projects in its very-global and distributed nature. I would be extremely cautious before proposing such a trial on English because there will undoubtedly be effects that we haven't considered. I think having a list of potential hypotheses drawn up will ease some of those concerns.

Would you like to kickstart such a list? We can brainstorm on it together going forward and bring in Nettrom and other folks for their expert advice. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure, I can kickstart it. It won't be a high priority though because the en.Wiki community will want to wait for more feedback from pt.Wiki and Farsi before even considering a debate about it. I'll let you know when I have something. Kudpung (talk) 00:40, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19

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

"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article

• "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

• 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. [3]
• 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 [4]

Community configuration

• 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

• 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. [5]
• 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. [6][7]
• 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

• 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)

Growth Newsletter #20

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

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

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

• 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

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

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)

Growth team newsletter #21

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

New project: Positive reinforcement

Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.

• 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

• 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

• "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. [8]

Suggested edits

• 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. [9]
• 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

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. [10]
• Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [11]

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

13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #22

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

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

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

The new impact module is part of the Positive Reinforcement project. The image displays the mockup for mobile we used for user testing.

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

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

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. [12][13]

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. [14]
• Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [15]
• Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [16]

Recent changes and fixed bugs

• We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [17]
• 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. [18]
• 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. [19]
• In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [20]

Have a question? A suggestion?

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)

A request

Hi Niharika,

We have posted an open letter to the Foundation and Board of Trustees. It concerns the development of MediaWiki extensions and needs the personal attention of all concerned developers and managers. Please see it at:

Open_letter_from_English_Wikipedia_New_Page_Reviewers

and

en:Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination/2022_WMF_letter

Your comments are welcome. Many thanks.

Kind regards,

On behalf of the English Wikipedia Community

Kudpung (talk) 09:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

en.Wiki Landing Page

Hi Niharika. I notice you don't respond on your talk pages, so I'll also be contacting you by email. All I really want to know is where is the community consensus for the roll out of this page? It would help the team I'm working with to integrate it in a larger plan to present to the Growth team which they will like very much. Thanks. Kudpung (talk) 05:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #23

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

Highlights

• 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.

Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test

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

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. [21]

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

• 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. [22]
• 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. [23][24]
• 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

• 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. [25]

Deployments

• Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [26]

Improving this newsletter

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)

Growth team newsletter #24

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

Newcomer experience projects

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

• 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. [27]
• 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. [28]

Mentorship

• When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [29]
• 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. [30]
• 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

• In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [31]
• This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations

• 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)

We need your feedback on a tool from the Wikimedia Summit

Reminder: the guide to using Baserow, presented during the Wikimedia Summit.

Hi! I'm contacting you as one of the participants in the Wikimedia Summit 2022, to kindly ask for your feedback through a 5-10 minute survey to evaluate 'Baserow' (note: the survey is on a Google form).

Baserow was a tool through which participants in the Summit co-created a database of Movement Strategy activities. We hope to learn from you how useful it may be to keep using it in the future to help document and connect on Movement Strategy work.

You are welcome and encouraged to fill out the survey in any language. Your feedback would be very appreciated --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC).

Growth team newsletter #25

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

Celebrations

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

• 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. [32][33]
  • 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. [34]
• 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

• Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
  • We are starting design work. [35]
  • Growth team Ambassadors helped with an initial evaluation of these section-level image suggestions. [36]
  • We will start a community consultation in which we share initial ideas and designs soon. [37]
• 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. [38]

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

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)