User talk:Kerry Raymond/Archive 16
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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)
The Signpost: 27 March 2022
- From the Signpost team: How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
- News and notes: Of safety and anonymity
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Countering Russian aggression with a camera
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Western Ukraine: Working with Wikipedia helps
- Disinformation report: The oligarchs' socks
- In the media: Ukraine, Russia, and even some other stuff
- Wikimedian perspective: My heroes from Russia, Ukraine & beyond
- Discussion report: Athletes are less notable now
- Technology report: 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon
- Arbitration report: Skeptics given heavenly judgement, whirlwind of Discord drama begins to spin for tropical cyclone editors
- Traffic report: War, what is it good for?
- Deletion report: Ukraine, werewolves, Ukraine, YouTube pundits, and Ukraine
- From the archives: Burn, baby burn
- Essay: Yes, the sky is blue
- Tips and tricks: Become a keyboard ninja
- On the bright side: The bright side of news
Your submission at Articles for creation: Mandy Quadrio has been accepted
Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.
The article has been assessed as C-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. This is a great rating for a new article, and places it among the top 21% of accepted submissions — kudos to you! You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk. Once you have made at least 10 edits and had an account for at least four days, you will have the option to create articles yourself without posting a request to Articles for creation.
If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .
Thanks again, and happy editing!
Kerry (talk) 08:28, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Your submission at Articles for creation: Deborah Kelly has been accepted
Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk. Once you have made at least 10 edits and had an account for at least four days, you will have the option to create articles yourself without posting a request to Articles for creation.
If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .
Thanks again, and happy editing!
Kerry (talk) 08:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)The Signpost: 24 April 2022
- News and notes: Double trouble
- In the media: The battlegrounds outside and inside Wikipedia
- Special report: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2)
- Technology report: 8-year-old attribution issues in Media Viewer
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content from March
- Interview: On a war and a map
- Serendipity: Wikipedia loves photographs, but hates photographers
- Traffic report: Justice Jackson, the Smiths, and an invasion
- News from the WMF: How Smart is the SMART Copyright Act?
- Humour: Really huge message boxes
- From the archives: Wales resigned WMF board chair in 2006 reorganization
New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
Hello Kerry Raymond,
At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.
Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.
In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 808 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 850 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.
This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 May 2022
- From the team: A changing of the guard
- News and notes: 2022 Wikimedia Board elections
- Community view: Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections
- In the media: Putin, Jimbo, Musk and more
- Special report: Three stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war
- Discussion report: Portals, April Fools, admin activity requirements and more
- WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19 revisited
- Technology report: A new video player for Wikimedia wikis
- Featured content: Featured content of April
- Interview: Wikipedia's pride
- Serendipity: Those thieving image farms
- Recent research: 35 million Twitter links analysed
- Tips and tricks: The reference desks of Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Strange highs and strange lows
- News from Diff: Winners of the Human rights and Environment special nomination by Wiki Loves Earth announced
- News from the WMF: The EU Digital Services Act: What’s the Deal with the Deal?
- From the archives: The Onion and Wikipedia
- Humour: A new crossword
Editing newsletter 2022 – #1
Read this in another language • Subscription list for the multilingual newsletter • Local subscription list
The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at most WMF-hosted wikis. You can join the discussion about this tool for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling the New Topic Tool by default. You will be able to turn it off in the tool or at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.
The Editing team plans to change the appearance of talk pages. These are separate from the changes made by the mw:Desktop improvements project and will appear in both Vector 2010 and Vector 2022. The goal is to add some information and make discussions look visibly different from encyclopedia articles. You can see some ideas at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Prototype Ready for Feedback.
23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Is this good enough?
Hi, in March 2018 you reviewed an article I put together called Radio Galaxy Zoo. Perhaps I shouldn't ask you, but please would you mind looking at the draft that is linked to and see if you think it is good enough to publish? It has nothing to do with Australia unfortunately. Its been in draft for 16 days and has improved a lot but I think is now ready to get the nod. If you don't have time, then no worries :) Its a big article that will get a lot bigger... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Diorama_Arts_Cooperative Richard Nowell (talk) 07:00, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Richard Nowell: Hi, Richard! As I pointed out to you back in 2018 and is mentioned in a number of other places on your User Talk page, you are an experienced contributor. You can simply go to your Draft, remove those tags requesting Article for Creation review, and then do "Move" (usually under your "More" menu item) and then on the drop-down that shows "Draft", scroll up and choose "(Article)" and write in the "reason" box something along the lines of "I think it's ready to publish" and hit the "Move page" button. The deed is done! Seriously, Articles for Creation has its reviews backed up for months. They really don't need experienced contributors like you gumming up the works. Do yourself and AfC reviewers a favour and just do it yourself. Kerry (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thankyou for your advice. It was quite simple to do after reading your response. I am glad you have faith enough to let me do the move. It would be good if you could view it on your way past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorama_Arts_Cooperative
New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022
Hello Kerry Raymond,
- Backlog status
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
- Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. 
Barnstars will be awarded.
- TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
- Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 11617 articles, as of 10:00, 5 November 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
- Notes
The Signpost: 26 June 2022
- News and notes: WMF inks new rules on government-ordered takedowns, blasts Russian feds' censor demands, spends big bucks
- In the media: Editor given three-year sentence, big RfA makes news, Guy Standing takes it sitting down
- Special report: "Wikipedia's independence" or "Wikimedia's pile of dosh"?
- Featured content: Articles on Scots' clash, Yank's tux, Austrian's action flick deemed brilliant prose
- Recent research: Wikipedia versus academia (again), tables' "immortality" probed
- Serendipity: Was she really a Swiss lesbian automobile racer?
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Enterprise signs first deals
- Gallery: Celebration of summer, winter
NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!
| New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive |  |
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Growth team newsletter #21
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: 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:
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. [1]
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. [2]
- 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. [3]
- Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [4]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 August 2022
- From the editors: Rise of the machines, or something
- News and notes: Information considered harmful
- In the media: Censorship, medieval hoaxes, "pathetic supervillains", FB-WMF AI TL bid, dirty duchess deeds done dirt cheap
- Op-Ed: The "recession" affair
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (part 3)
- Community view: Youth culture and notability
- Opinion: Criminals among us
- Arbitration report: Winds of change blow for cyclone editors, deletion dustup draws toward denouement
- Deletion report: This is Gonzo Country
- Discussion report: Notability for train stations, notices for mobile editors, noticeboards for the rest of us
- Featured content: A little list with surprisingly few lists
- Tips and tricks: Cleaning up awful citations with Citation bot
- On the bright side: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war — three (more) stories
- Essay: How to research an image
- Recent research: A century of rulemaking on Wikipedia analyzed
- Serendipity: Don't cite Wikipedia
- Gallery: A backstage pass
- From the archives: 2012 Russian Wikipedia shutdown as it happened
Gympie governance
I've noticed that you seem to have a good regional knowledge, so I thought you might check the last line of the Governance section of the Gympie article which looks like vandalism to me. The name of the local member as of 2015 is not mentioned in the source, though several other names are. Not having any local knowledge, I would appreciate your input. Editrite! (talk) 02:55, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
- @Editrite!: Well spotted! It was indeed vandalism (diff). I have fixed it. Many thanks! Kerry (talk) 03:02, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022
Hello Kerry Raymond,
- Backlog status
After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.
- Coordination
- MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
- Open letter to the WMF
- The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
- TIP - Reviewing by subject
- Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
- New reviewers
- The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP message
Hi Kerry Raymond,
- Invitation
For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
Editing news 2022 #2
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
The Signpost: 31 August 2022
- News and notes: Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere
- Special report: Wikimania 2022: no show, no show up?
- In the media: Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
- Discussion report: Boarding the Trustees
- News from Wiki Education: 18 years a Wikipedian: what it means to me
- In focus: Thinking inside the box
- Tips and tricks: The unexpected rabbit hole of typo fixing in citations...
- Technology report: Vector (2022) deployment discussions happening now
- Serendipity: Two photos of every library on earth
- Featured content: Our man drills are safe for work, but our Labia is Fausta.
- Recent research: The dollar value of "official" external links
- Traffic report: What dreams (and heavily trafficked articles) may come
- Essay: Delete the junk!
- Humour: CommonsComix No. 1
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago
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
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. [5][6]
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. [7]
- Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [8]
- Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [9]
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. [10]
- 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. [11]
- 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. [12]
- In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [13]
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17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Request: Draft:Merkur Stahlwaren
Hello @Kerry Raymond, I have submitted an entry about the internationally active company called Merkur. I read in your profile that you are mainly interested in Queensland history, but still wanted to ask you if you could maybe take a look at my article I handed in? I put a lot of effort into creating it and I would be so grateful. Here you can come to the draft: Draft:Merkur Stahlwaren.
Thanks again and many greetings
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The Signpost: 30 September 2022
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Sorry
I didn't know Australian people spell English different. Sorry for those edits, mate. Ghost of Kiev (talk) 14:03, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
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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.
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. [14]
- Add a Link
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. [15]
- 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. [16][17]
- 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. [18]
Deployments
- Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [19]
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)
maybe its the silly season
- One - ygm - about one thing
- Another - how do we convince journos to actually stick to a standard format of representing commons items, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-05/last-tasmanian-tiger-remains-found-in-museum-cupboard/101733008 spot in the body of the story a common problem with citation of even PD items?
- I wonder if the wmf speak of onboarding might be called out as junk language at some stage?
Geographical coordinates for places
Hi! On the talk page Category talk:Towns in Queensland I’ve started a discussion about the seemingly relentless inclusion of geographical coordinates for places in the various articles about rural towns in Queensland. Could I ask you to have a look at it, please? Thank you! Boscaswell talk 22:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Category:Q150 has been nominated for deletion
Category:Q150 has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:09, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 January 2023
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Happy New Year, Kerry Raymond!
Kerry Raymond,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
— Moops ⋠T⋡ 20:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
A tag has been placed on Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Balranald Shire indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz Read! Talk! 01:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Template:TroveRef
Template:TroveRef has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 January 2023
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Silkwood
The Google street view is impressive — thanks. These are the pics from '08. I'm not sure about the bank, but it's a cute photo.
That was a great trip — daughter-in-law lent us her car with the instructions to get as many km on it as possible (something to do with salary sacrificing which this simple plodder never understood). We saw Paronella and Mackay and a whole lot else. Someone backed their towball into the vehicle while parked at an RSL. Left a distinct impression but DIL was distinctly unimpressed.::Cheers, Doug butler (talk) 07:05, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
- Your writeup was clear and interesting. Thanks Kerry. Doug butler (talk) 19:04, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for drawing my attention to it and providing the photos. I used your Silkwood bank photo too since it is of interest too. Kerry (talk) 23:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)