User talk:Papuass

Welcome to Meta!

Hello Papuass, and 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 (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

- Ottava Rima (talk) 00:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

Hi! I just want to thank you and give you this barnstar for your help with the translation of the 2011 fundraiser! The fundraiser was the best we ever had, both in terms of the amount we collected and in terms of number of translations. We couldn't have done either one without the help we got from you and other translators. If you are interested, we made a report, which has some statistics about the translations.

And: I have one more request, and that is that you take this survey. You may have got an e-mail about it, and if you did, please ignore this. But if you didn't it would be great if you would take this survey too, so we can learn to improve the translation experience.

Again, thanks for your help with translations – you're awesome! Jon Harald Søby (WMF) 14:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Translate some names for hundreds software projects including MediaWiki

Hello, I'm writing you because you subscribed to a Language support team. As you know, Wikimedia projects exist in almost 300 languages; supporting them all is a big effort so we partner with other organisations. One small but visible thing we miss is that many interwiki links in sidebar (among others) don't offer a translation of the language name when hovered. We're now able to translate 100 more language names in your language.

If you're interested, I can create you an account to submit translations on the CLDR web tool (within June 14): please send an email to ask one and I'll follow up with instructions. On CLDR you can translate and tweak many other things, if you desire; your work will impact hundreds of software projects. Thanks, Nemo 17:58, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect status

Dear Papuass, since you are an administrator on a wiki from which no user participated in this discussion, I'd like to make sure you are aware of some recent events which may alter what the Wikimedia Foundation lets you do on your wiki: Superprotect.

• Request for comment: Requests for comment/Superprotect rights
• An open letter about its implementation: Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer

Peteforsyth 09:36, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia CEE Spring 2015 2nd meeting

Dear Papuass,

I am contacting You as a contact person of Latvia for the Wikimedia CEE Spring 2015 event and to announce that the second meeting for the Wikimedia CEE Spring organisation team will take place on the 28th of January 2015. There will be 2 discussion groups for the meeting, as to get as much people involved (some of us have other engagements during the daytime and others are not available during the evenings).

The first group will start the discussion 12:00 CET (13:00 EET, 14:00 MSK, 15:00 AMT/AZT, 17:00 ALMT, 3:00 PST).

The second group will start the discussion 18:00 CET (19:00 EET, 20:00 MSK, 21:00 AMT/AZT, 23:00 ALMT, 9:00 PST).

During the discussion both Skype call and IRC will be used. For more details see event meetings page! Wikimedia Eesti will be responsible for moderating the groups, however all contributions to the etherpad protocol are more than welcome!

Thank you for your kind attention and CEE you soon! --Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE) (talk) 12:06, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Movement Wide Finance Report 2014

Dear Papuass,

I’m Alex, currently a finance fellow (i.e intern) at the Wikimedia Foundation. I worked before for Wikimedia France, planning the Hackathon Lyon 2015 mainly. I'm today contacting you because of your activity for Wikimedia Latvia User Group.

Last year, Finance Fellows produced a financial report that included financial activity from every chapters. It was great and has been presented at the Wikimania in Mexico.

If you haven’t seen the results of the Report 2013, here they are: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-wide_Financial_Trends_Report_2013

We’re currently starting the Report 2014 and this year we also want to include user groups to improve the scope of our work. I want to tell you that I’ve tried to make the process as short and easy as possible, so that shouldn’t require a lot of your time.

The aim of such a report is global. It helps having an idea of how the money is used across the movement, it helps chapters and user groups to learn about best practice and finally it leads to more transparency through a qualitative work, which I believe is important.

Could you briefly tell me if you had any income and expenses in 2014? If you are not the person responsible for this, please tell me who is the user the most likely to know this information.

I’ll be your contact for this project this year, I’m looking forward to working with you!

Cheers, ACella (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello! We did not hanve any budgeted money from WMF and we do not do local fundraising. However, we did apply for a grant for WLM and worked with external partner who had a budget for the event (we did not manage finances). --Papuass (talk) 11:56, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, your question was about 2014. I reported about 1015. In 2014 we did not handle any money at all. --Papuass (talk) 11:57, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Your username

If it means what I think it does (I learned a bit of Russian), is that not considered offensive in Latvia? 94.12.84.151 11:00, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

It means one of Papuan people (hence the picture). In Russian the meaning is also is something like primitive people. However, this meaning is not used very widely in Latvian language (which is my mother tongue, not Russian). Of course, I was fully aware of it while choosing the username. Call it a self-deprecation. --Papuass (talk) 11:32, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Should FuzzyBot remove all potentially outdated translations?

Hello, thanks for adding multiple new translations in your language here at Meta-Wiki in recent years. Please join the discussion with your opinion: Should FuzzyBot automatically remove all potentially outdated translations?. Nemo (talk) 12:01, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia CEE Spring 2016/Structure/Latvia

I have added a table to Wikimedia CEE Spring 2016/Structure/Latvia section as new module example. Could we use it? --Voll (talk) 17:18, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking the same. The only missing feature is somehow marking newly created articles (where to get data for that?). --Papuass (talk) 17:55, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

CEE Spring 2016 - prizes

Hi!

I’m writing to you on behalf of Wikimedia Poland to inform you about the reimbursement process regarding CEE Spring 2016.

According to the international rules:

• step 1 Local organizers buy the prizes themselves with their own money and acquire an invoice issued to Wikimedia Polska (Stowarzyszenie Wikimedia Polska ul. Tuwima 95, pok. 15 90-031 Łódź Polska)
• step 2 local organizers send scan of the invoice to one of the international organizers (natalia.szafran@wikimedia.pl or nikola.kalchev@gmail.com) along with a protocol of the process of selection of winners and with a calculation of overall costs. The protocol must include actual names of the winners (the names will not be made public, they will be kept only in documents of Wikimedia Polska). The e-mail should also include data needed to make a bank transfer (bank account number and name of the account owner)
• step 3 Wikimedia Poland will reimburse the money within two weeks after receiving all the documents needed

This way of buying the prizes is strongly advised. In case it is impossible the prizes can be bought by Wikimedia Polska from the suggested online shop. In this case you need to send to one of the international organizers (natalia.szafran@wikimedia.pl or nikola.kalchev@gmail.com) an email with links to the prizes in an online shop, a protocol of the proces of selection of winners (containing their actual names and usernames). After the purchase is done Wikimedia Polska needs to get an email containing some kind of proof that the prizes have reached the winners (postage waybill scan for instance or a scan of a declartion that the prize has been handed over, the declaration must be signed by the winner).

Please keep in mind that whenever possible local coordinators should buy the prizes themselves. Wikimedia Polska will buy them only in those cases when it is absolutely necessary. All documents must be sent to Wikimedia Poland by the end of June.

Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us. Me and Nikola will be happy to guide you through the process and make it as easy as possible. And thank you for being a part of CEE Spring and organizing this awesome project in your community. Magalia (talk) 21:50, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You’re getting this message because you participated in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey and we want to make sure you don't miss it this year – or at least can make the conscious choice to ignore if it you want to. The 2015 survey decided what the Community Tech team should work on during 2016. It was also the focus of Wikimedia hackathons and work by other developers. You can see the status of wishes from the 2015 wishlist at 2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Results.

The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is now open for wishes. You can create proposals until November 20. You will be able to vote on which wishes you think are best or most important between November 28 and December 12. /Johan (WMF) (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

LV support for #1lib1ref

Hi Papuass, I saw that you translated and updated the #1lib1ref campaign page for Latvian. I wanted to reach out to you, and ask if you needed any help organizing the campaign. We recommend that communities, reach out directly to the library networks in your language and cultural context. For more information, about how we hope to support campaign development, please see this starter email for the campaign organizers, and let me know if we can help you on any of those steps.Astinson (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Astinson (WMF)! I was planning to reach out to my existing contacts, but have not done it yet. --Papuass (talk) 20:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Sending an email to library networks seems to work well globally. Here is a draft email we have been sending around: via Google Drive

Also, would you be interested in supporting the translation of Citation Hunt into Latvian. I will also need a little more information for the developer for citation hunt:

A) a link to a tutorial in Latvian for adding citations to Latvian Wikipedia

B) Confirmation that the main template for "Citation Needed" is https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veidne:Nepiecie%C5%A1ama_atsauce and the maintenance category for it is https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorija:Raksti,_kuru_apgalvojumiem_nepiecie%C5%A1amas_atsauces

Please let me know if I can help in any other way. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Astinson (WMF). Translation is done. We do not have Citoid adapted to Latvian yet, so we have only lv:Palīdzība:Atsauces and lv:Vikipēdija:RefToolbar. B) is correct. --Papuass (talk) 17:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I see that the first link is a really basic instruction on how to implement ref tags. Do you have any other instructions (such as when it is appropriate to add a reference, etc? If not, we can definitely use that first one. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

There is more general page lv:Palīdzība:Atsauces un ārējās saites (includes external links) @Astinson (WMF):--Papuass (talk) 14:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Papuass, just one last question: is there any special policy for omitting references in the lead section, such as enwiki's WP:CITELEAD? If so, can you please provide a link to it? We usually display a notice about that in Citation Hunt, like so: https://tools.wmflabs.org/citationhunt/en?id=8976a0d6. This is totally optional if no such policy exists in lvwiki. Thanks! Surlycyborg (talk)

There is no such policy enforced or even formally defined. --Papuass (talk) 21:18, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Done! Please have a look: https://tools.wmflabs.org/citationhunt/lv . It's a little bit experimental, because I'm trying to use some in the Latvian version some of the latest improvements I had to make for the German version, so let me know if you encounter problems! You can either ping me or file an issue on GitHub (https://github.com/eggpi/citationhunt/issues/). Thanks! Surlycyborg (talk)

Invitation to Wikimedia CEE Spring 2017

Dear Mārtiņš,

Last year you were the local organiser of CEE Spring in Latvia and we invite you to participate in this year's contest! Please subscribe to the mailing list of the local organisers at https://lists.wikimedia.bg/mailman/listinfo/ceespring-localorganisers, add your community at the Meta page with the participants and discuss this year's edition of the contest on its talk page (Talk:Wikimedia CEE Spring 2017/Participants. We are looking forward to reading from you soon!

On behalf of the international organisers,

--Ата ^(talk) 20:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Met Open Access Artworks Challenge (15 May - 30 June)

Met Open Access Artworks Challenge!

We'd like to invite UNESCO participants to join a new challenge on the same model, the Met Open Access Artworks Challenge. You can contribute by illustrating with images using some of the 375k photos now under CC0, starting or improving articles (try our new Mbabel tool!), or creating translations (if your language isn't listed, please ask!). You can sign up here: Met Open Access Artworks Challenge/Participants. --Pharos (talk) 17:59, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Approved submission for Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017

Dear Mārtiņš,
On behalf of the Programme Committee of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017, I am pleased to inform you that your submission Current state of Wikidata powered infoboxes was approved for presentation and was included in the event programme. Please take your time to review the schedule, as there might be some slight differences between the available timeslot allocated for your talk, and the duration you requested. Thank you for your participation, and see you in Warsaw. :) Bests, →Spiritia 14:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Adjusted text

There has been a request to inform all who voted in the RfC about interlinking accounts involved with paid editing about the following adjustment in the "statement of issue" on Sept 18th, 2017.

It was clarified that this effort will help deal not only with impersonation of specific Wikipedians but also claims of being in good standing made by those who are not.[1] Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Asian Month 2017 officially starts!

Dear WAM organizer,

I’m Erick Guan, the coordinator of WAM 2017. Welcome to Wikipedia Asian Month 2017. Here is some information about organizations of events at a national level.

Timeline

The event lasts a month for the participants. As of the beginning of the event, please:

• Invite previous participants to join. We have a template you may want to use.
• Setup your WAM page in your local wikiproject if you haven’t done that.
• Link your WAM page at Wikipedia Asian Month 2017. It’s important for others to understand and connect to your community! Remove the X when you done that. WAM is organized at national level. So I have to ask you to put your country in front of your name if you haven’t done that.
• Publish a notification about WAM in site notice as well as village pump. Go public!
• Connect with us. Generally send me an email so that we can reach you for future information!
• Become the jury member in a campaign on Fountain which is an amazing tool for you to supervise participants’ articles. If you don’t have the campaign set up, please contact us! And put a link to your community’s campaign page for participants’ navigation.
• Organize a off-site editathon event. A coffee bar, internet and laptops. Though it’s optional. If you want to do that, please contact me.

In the following days, you should answer the questions from your community and supervise the submissions. Hope you have fun!

Interesting articles

Have some interesting articles in your mind or from community? Drop us a line so that we can exchange the information to other communities.

Looking for help

At all times, please send me an email at erick@asianmonth.wiki--Fantasticfears (talk) 23:34, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-01

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The Global Collaboration report for December is now available (in English).
• Filters are better integrated on Related Changes (see below).
• Structured discussions now use the 2017 wikitext editor (see below).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Bug fixes

• When searching, a click on a filter capsule moved the list of filters. [2]
• On Related Changes page, the page name entry box didn't show the entirety of long page names. [3]
• Transcludeing Special:RelatedChanges on a page added unexpected parameters to the URL. [4]
• Filter menu was opening upwards. [5]
• ORES preferences on Recent Changes and Watchlist preferences pages have been rationalized. [6]
• Users are now prevented from clicking on a link when they click outside of the dropdown menu to close it. [7]

Work in progress

• Filters on Related Changes page are better integrated and get new features, for instance: [8]
  • The standard auto-completion mechanism is available when you search for a page to look at.
  • It is more clear if you are looking to pages linked from the target page or to the target page.
  • You no longer need to click the "Show" button; the page updates automatically when a page is positively identified via autocompletion.

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Further enhancement are made for list (Suggestions/In-progress/Published) items on mobile screens. Long titles no longer overflow or overlap with other interface elements. [9]
• Various changes to the "New translation" dialog and the selected page for translation have been made: [10]
  • Longer titles of selected pages are displayed in smaller. Some space has been added around to increase readability.
  • Language codes are not truncated by ellipsis anymore. Only full, autonym language names are subject to truncation.
  • Minimal screen sizes and selected suggestion dialog have been revisited. They are more consistent in responding to screen size changes.
  • Discard button is no longer shown on small screen sizes.
• Language filters no longer render wrong or non-existent language codes. [11]
• The "New translation" dialog now shows a loading indicator and doesn't display an error when you change the source language after an unsuccessful research. [12]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This works with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. [13][14]
  • The documentation has been updated and needs translations updates.
• Prométhée, from French Wikipedia, has created some gadgets to customise Structured discussions interface.
  • The documentation is ready to be translated.

Future changes

• Structured discussions does not always follow wiki's configurations concerning talk pages indexation. This will be fixed. [15]
• Hidden topics will not be indexed by search engines anymore. [16]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Bug fixes

• User rights change notifications were displaying a broken link. This is now fixed. [17]
• "Mark as read" buttons had a bad appearance for users who don't have JavaScript activated. [18]

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

00:56, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-02

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• Collaboration and Language are now going their way separately. Updates about Content Translation are not included in this newsletter anymore. Please refer to the Language report.
• Collaboration has a new project: Map improvements 2018.
  • The team’s engagement with maps is based on 2017 Community Wishlist proposal Kartographer Improvements, though the work won’t be restricted to items named there.
  • The project is currently in its very early research and planning stages.
  • It has a limited term that’s scheduled to conclude at the end of June 2018.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• es.wikipedia, es.wikibooks, sv.wikipedia, and simple.wikipedia get ORES predictions on Recent Changes (and on Watchlist through "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽" Beta feature). [19][20][21][22]

Problems

• The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [23][24]
• On Related changes it was not possible to use Saved filters for several articles. It has been fixed. [25]
• Transclude special:relatedchanges on a subpage removed #contentSub. This is now fixed. [26]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The wording when you send a thanks message has changed. Instead of Yes or No it says Thank and Cancel. It is also now easier to understand that all thanks are public. [27]
• A notification is now sent to account owner on multiple unsuccessful login attempts. [28]

Problems

• Between week 7 and 20 February, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [29]
• Long page titles on Special:Notifications were not truncated. This is now fixed. [30]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can now press CTRL + ENTER to post a new message. [31]
• It wasn't possible to create a description of a Structured discussions board. This has been fixed. [32]

Problems

• On wikis using the Beta feature, it is not possible to enable or disable Structured discussion from the Beta page. However, admins can create and move the pages.

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

11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-03

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The Collaboration team has announced the start of a new project: In-Context Help and Onboarding. The idea is to improve retention of new wiki editors by giving them short tutorials and other training experiences related to, and triggered by, their current activities on the wikis (that’s the “in context” part). The project follows from the conclusions of the New Editor Experiences research. The work is in its very early stages, but we’d like to hear from people with ideas on the subject—particularly if you have experience supporting or training new contributors.

Map improvements 2018 [More information]

• Maps using Maplink and Mapframe functions now include an extra zoom level (level 19). This is part of the Kartographer Improvements, the number one request of the 2017 Community Wishlist survey. [33]

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• Number of edit to show in recent changes information text was incorrect in Special:Preferences. It has been rephrased. [34]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. That new feature has been documented. [35]
• Preferences panel on Special:Notifications was overlapping other elements. This has been fixed. [36]

Future changes

• An important work is under progress to allow thanks of log entry. This is done by the Community Tech team. [37]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Structured Discussions extension has been uninstalled from wikis not using it. However, it is still possible for a community to request a trial of Structured discussions. [38]

Problems

• It was not possible to opt-in and opt-out Structured discussions on wikis using it as a Beta feature. It is now fixed. [39]

Future changes

• The visual editor and 2017 wikitext editor interface is going to change for consistency. The toolbar, dialogs and menus will appear slightly bigger; some icons will look different. Content or functionality will not change. That change will apply to Structured Discussions as well. [40]

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

12:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Can we talk about editathon organizer tools?

Hi Papuass, I’m a product manager at the Wikimiedia Foundation. My team's next assignment is to design and build a tool that will make life easier for people who organize and run editathons. (Here's the project page).  

I’m reaching out people known to organize editathons to learn more about your process and needs. I’d like to better understand where you most need help and what changes you’d like to see. If that sounds interesting to you, I’d I’d like to set up a time when we might chat via video conference (Google Hangouts).

If you’d like to talk, please send me a contact email where I can reach you and I’ll be in touch. You can reach me here: jmatazzoni[at]wikimedia.org. You might also wish to let me know what time zone you’re in (I’m in California time).

I’m looking forward to learning more about your work! —JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I am interested. We can schedule a call when I return from Wikimania. --Papuass (talk) 16:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

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.

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.

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)

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.

Participate in usability testing for new Event Metrics tool?

Hi Papuass. I'd like to invite you to participate in usability tests we're planning for the Event Metrics program now in development. The test will involve a one-hour video conference session with a design researchers, who will lead you through a series of tasks on the program and talk to you about how well the tool's user interface works for you and how it could be improved. Sessions will take place the second and third weeks of January.

If you think you can help out, please email Daisy Chen at dchen[at]wikimedia.org and let her know:

• The email address where you prefer to be reached.
• Your time zone
• General times when you prefer to meet (evenings, mornings, etc.)

Daisy will follow up to schedule a time. Thanks for your help in making Event Metrics a tool that event organizers will find empowering. —JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Extended to Dec: Wikipedia Asian Art Month with Metropolitan Museum of Art

Suzuri-bako, now in 11 languages!

I'd like to invite you to join Wikipedia Asian Art Month in the December extension of the sub-contest; if you write or translate just one article and include one of our images, you'll get a special Metropolitan Museum of Art postcard. And if you're one of the grand prize winners, you'll get a Met guidebook or Asian art publication.--Pharos (talk) 21:32, 5 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.

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.

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)

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), 11:45, 16 May 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)

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)

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)

WAM2019 welcomes your support!

Hello Papuass,

Thank you for joining us as a Wikipedia community organizer. We would appreciate your help to get the central banner localized in your language.

You can visit here and select your language (which language you want the contents to be translated into) and then translate it.

WAM2019 Team thanks you for your support.

Kind regards,
WAM2019 International Team
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:53, 2 November 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)

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)

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)