Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features

A new feature for newcomers: "Suggested links"

We have a "new" feature for English Wikipedia's newcomers: Add a link. It is new to English Wikipedia, but it's been released on almost all other Wikipedia language editions.

TL;DR
Add a link allows newcomers to discover editing by adding relevant links between articles. We will make the Add a link task available starting May 21, but the activation is up to your community.

Current situation
One of the suggested edits at English Wikipedia is adding links between articles. This task is based on some maintenance templates. If this maintenance template is not used, then no task is available. I just checked how many article were available for this task: three. Last time I checked, on April 13, one (1!) article was suggested to newcomers.  

We observed that the low availability of articles to edit, and the lack of diversity, can create frustration for newcomers.

Add a link, using link suggestions, is available at all Wikipedias (minus a few tiny new wikis). English and Germain are the two ones without this easy task.

A new experience
"Add a link" offers a new experience. It creates a "suggest" editing mode, where an algorithm suggests links. Users have to select if the link is relevant. At the moment, links are relevant in 70% of cases. The idea is to encourage newcomers to use their judgment to decide whether the link fits well.

The full process is described at mw:Help:Growth/Tools/Add_a_link. You can test it at any other Wikipedia, for instance at simple.wikipedia.org.

This new experience is beneficial for newcomers:

• they are guided during all steps of the process
• they are more likely to make edits and return editing, as they see that they can edit (see "add a link" Experiment Analysis)
• they are more likely to be retained as editors
• as they are empowered to make decisions, they make more edits

The feature is community configurable, and some limits have been set: some sections or elements of an article are excluded from receiving links (infobox, bibliographies, references...). The number of links added per article per day, and the number of articles newcomers can edit each day, is configurable too. The algorithm is configured to avoid overlinking, to prevent WP:SEAOFBLUE, etc.  

Communities' feedback, and our responses
As we deployed this tool to all Wikipedias, we heard the following questions and concerns:

• "These links are not useful"
  • There is a global understanding that the most important thing is that newcomers understand that they really can edit Wikipedia and that Add a link helps achieve this. Overall, added links are not considered harmful by the vast majority of community members we chatted with.  The fact that adding links is limited on a daily basis for each user makes newcomers switch rapidly to tasks that are perceived as more productive.
• "Edits that add links are too numerous”
  • It is possible to diminish this perception by lowering the number of edits each newcomer can make daily (the default is 25), in the community configuration. Limiting this number, newcomers switch to other task types.
• "These links are difficult to patrol"
  • 70% of links are accurate, but not all newcomers read instructions to select them.   Sometimes, one of the added links isn't accurate, and it has to be removed. A full revert of the edit might not be the best option, as it is not really an encouraging sign for the newcomer. We encourage experienced users to edit the link; a good tool to help to do this is DiffEdit. Also, the number of links to be added for each article is limited to 3 in the default community configuration. However, lowering this number could disengage newcomers.
• "I see one user adding useless links repetitively”
  • Like any other user editing, telling them to improve their edits is a first step. And like for any other editor not following rules or advice, it is perfectly acceptable to tell them to stop editing.
• "I understand why this task exists: it is a good way for editors to start editing. And it is harmless"
  • Yes! :)

How can you help us?
“Add a link” will be available at your wiki on May 21, but not activated. Rather than enabling this feature by default, we will release the task as "turned off" and any English Wikipedia admin can turn it on via special:EditGrowthConfig. Next step is up to English Wikipedia community: turning Add a link on, as a test, or as a pillar of newcomer's onboarding.

If you have any questions, let us know!

KStoller-WMF (talk) and Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a great addition for new editors. Is there any way to suggest articles that could be improved by adding links?

And is there a feature that would allow searches for Wikipedians to add links between articles? For example, a major task for our new Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature is to connect the dots between Wikipedia articles about authors who have written electronic literature works, the works themselves (that often refer to other works in the genre), museums and collections that hold the works, and an explanation of what electronic literature is.

Thank you for this new feature. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 15:10, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

@LoveElectronicLiterature, the way to suggest them is to add Template:Underlinked to the article. You can do this easily with WP:Twinkle. -- asilvering (talk) 17:15, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I just checked how many article were available for this task: three. Last time I checked, on April 13, one (1!) article was suggested to newcomers. This isn't because people don't use the maintenance tag, but because newbies are already coming to do this task thanks to the article suggestions on the newcomer homepage. It's one of English wikipedia's few backlogs that aren't actually backlogged!

This does cause a problem where if someone doesn't come by regularly to remove articles from this maintenance category, the articles there get extremely, extremely overlinked. I'm glad that the algorithm in this new function was designed with this in mind when it comes to suggesting words to add a link to. But another component of the problem is that newbies are hesitant to remove the maintenance tag themselves, which ends up being a self-reinforcing problem as new editors show up, think "huh, I guess I'm supposed to link even more articles?", do that, and... still don't remove the tag. Does the add a link task remind editors to remove the maintenance tag when they're done? It doesn't look to me like it does. -- asilvering (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that was a major hurdle for me as a newbie editor last year. I did not know how to remove maintenance tags and I was not sure how to edit. Some of the tagged maintenance articles needed a lot more help than grammar or simple editing. I think a clear instruction on how to add links and search on articles within Wikipedia to add links--and then how to remove the tag would be helpful as first editor steps. I will start tagging a few elit articles for link help. We are also in the early stages of planning a world-wide elit wikipedia editathon for August 15 2024 at 3 pm UTC, so this is perfect timing for us. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 17:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

@LoveElectronicLiterature, the task described above is indeed a clear instruction on how to add links and search on articles within Wikipedia to add links, so no worries there. It's just the removing of the tag that I think it's missing. -- asilvering (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for your comments! :)

At the moment, the articles needing links are selected based on the Underlinked template. If this template is used at English Wikipedia, it is not at most wikis. This is the reason why we decided to shift to algorithm predictions. With the deployment of Add a link, we would not rely on the template anymore.

I checked on Recent changes, and I found very interesting cases. As not many articles are suggested, they are all very heavily edited to add links. In this example, the article was edited 22 times over 12 hours, by 16 newcomers! It even continued after the template was removed, because the article was still cached on our side. Fr this one, we have 7 newcomers adding links to the same article in a very short period of time. There is a real need for more articles choice.

We also observed the case you describe, where newcomers make changes, but don't remove the maintenance template. Most people believe they will automatically vanish. We can't blame them, as it is far from being obvious (French Wikipedia added a message to the template "please remove it when done" and it pretty much works). We plan to work on easing patrollers/maintainers' tasks regarding suggested edits, and one of the possibilities would be to have maintenance tasks. This is an option among many, and I'd be curious to know your thoughts around these new task types.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:35, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I misunderstood, then - I thought the algorithm was suggesting which words to link, not that it was also finding new articles that might need links. That sounds much more helpful! -- asilvering (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

You are true regarding how it works: the algorithm suggests articles within certain topic, and suggests links (number of links being configurable), while the "old" one only surfaces articles that match a given topic topic. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

This is probably more information that anyone here wants to dig into, but we've documented how the Link Recommendation algorithm works here: Link_recommendation_model_for_add-a-link_structured_task, and we've made further improvements to ensure we are prioritizing "underlinked" articles (T301096). One benefit I've seen at other wikis, is that this task helps surface somewhat neglected articles; sometimes after a link is added, that newcomer or another editor will make further improvements to the article. KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:53, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! This is actually the information I did want to dig into. :) -- asilvering (talk) 18:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

While there are instructions to try this on simple.wiki, I would be more comfortable messing around on test.wiki or something. That said, I did take a look on simple.wiki and it didn't seem detrimental, taking me to pages with no wikilinks. CMD (talk) 02:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis The feature is available on test.wiki and Beta as well, so feel free to test the feature more fully in those places. However, just keep in mind that sometimes the links suggested might be a little quirky in those environments, or load a little slower. You may also have to check the "Display newcomer homepage" setting in your preference to test the feature (Growth features and the Newcomer Homepage are enabled by default for newly created accounts, but they aren't currently enabled by default for auto-created accounts). Thanks for testing! KStoller-WMF (talk) 16:44, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task?

According to the thread just above, the new algorithm based links task will be available and disabled on English Wikipedia in one week. (The current task is template based).

The default rate limit for links added in this way is 25 per editor per day, and three per article per day.

Should we enable this feature? Should we modify the defaults?

Any editor feel free to refactor this, add subheadings / RFC tags if you feel it necessary. I'm just tryna start a conversation to check in on consensus. Folly Mox (talk) 17:57, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Folly Mox for starting this discussion and @Sdkb for making sure we opened up this discussion to a wider audience!

I just wanted to give you an update and let you know that we have the backend prepared to release the Suggested Links newcomer task.  You will now see two "Add links between articles" tasks in Special:EditGrowthConfig. The one with the 🤖 robot icon is the new "Suggested links" task. However, the task has a "Disabled in site configuration" notice next to the task. This is the first time we are releasing this task in this manner (making the task available but not enabling the feature ourselves).  We ran into some unexpected technical complexities with this approach (T308144#9811861). I think we have two options for how to proceed:

1. The Growth team can enable the task at any time on the server side. Just let me know if you think consensus is reached and we are happy to enable the task.  (We can also disable the task if requested).
2. Or, we can wait until the new version of Community Configuration is released (likely by July 2024), and at that point we can ensure the configuration form is working as intended so any English Wikipedia admin can enable or disable the task.

Sorry for the additional complexity, this release is coming at an odd time as the Growth team is also working to finish up the new CommunityConfiguration Extension. KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Notified: WP:VPR. Sdkb ^talk 21:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

In general, this looks like a useful feature. The setting is, I believe, the number of link suggestions per article and the number of articles per day. In my experience, more links per article, and fewer articles per day works better: 9×4 seems just fine. What I don't like about the feature is that it does not seem to be learning anything from our feedback. If you tell it not to wikilink month names, it will still wikilink month names. If, say, "Italy, Germany, Poland, and Greece" is somewhere in the text, it will offer to wikilink Poland, but not the other three; manual link addition is not possible in this mode. Can WMF work on these and other issues, or is this their final product - that I don't know. Ponor (talk) 02:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

In the thread just above, Trizek describes the "25" value as the number of edits each newcomer can make daily. The parameter at de:Spezial:EditGrowthConfig certainly google translates to "maximum number of link suggestions to display for each suggested task".

As to linking month names, country names, etc., I brought this up last year at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Archive 7 § Usefulness of "Add links" task? A few threads later, Trizek confirmed we aren't using any sort of rejection links lists.

Anyway there doesn't seem to be much engagement with this topic, so for the purpose of establishing consensus, I'll say Sure, let's turn it on and give it a go. It seems like it should be easy enough to turn it back off if the newcomer links become too high maintenance. Folly Mox (talk) 18:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. I think they misunderstood the setting, they're allowing 25 tasks, 3 links each: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:EditGrowthConfig?uselang=en Ponor (talk) 13:12, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

The task is not enabled at de.wp. :)

These numbers (25 tasks, 3 links per task) are the default settings we suggest. Most big wikis kept them, except Russian (5 tasks, 3 links per task). Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:04, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Also not opposed to enabling, presumably it will have a tracking tag or consistent edit summary? fr.wiki stats show decent takeup, although as on en.wiki that page does not have ways to see individual examples. CMD (talk) 02:09, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Good question, @Chipmunkdavis. Yes, these edits are all tagged. Here's an example edit summary and associated tags:

(Link suggestions feature: 2 links added.) (Tags: Visual edit, Newcomer task, Suggested: add links)

You can view example edits on French Wikipedia via this filtered Recent Changes view.

Special:NewcomerTasksInfo will show you task availability, if you want to review metrics on task click through rates, completion, and revert rates, we have a Growth KPIs dashboard here. KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm speaking from a good deal of ignorance about how this will work, but as an old-hand editor, I do think particular aspects should be monitored, such as reverts to these link edits and how much this will pile up in editors' watchlists (i.e., I have no idea as to how much of these are going to pop up in my watchlist to have to review), and such. I like the idea of experimenting with this, but I also hope this will not be so hardened that we can't possibly ever decide to stop it. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:44, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower, we are here to answer your questions. :)

It is possible to monitor the reverted links, using Recent Changes or Watchlist, as both links addition and reverts are tagged. See for French Wikipedia, where I filtered all Add a link edits, with reverted edits highlighted in red. As I post this message, I see 2 reverted edits for 500 links addition. It looks like what I observe on average, at any major Wikipedia. Would it be the same at English Wikipedia? Honestly, I don't know.

Reverted edits are not the only point to consider. Let's imagine an article where three links were added, where one link is not okay. Some users will revert the full edit, or leave it like this. Being myself active at French Wikipedia as a volunteer, I use Diffedit to quickly fix these links.

Also, my watchlist is not really flooded by these links addition. I just checked my watchlist, and I only see three articles edited to add links over the last 500 edits at articles I monitor. ut again, I can't transpose it to English Wikipedia.

We're offering your community the chance to activate the functionality, literally: once you've decided to do so, an admin will be able to turn Add a link on. And the reverse is true: it will be possible to deactivate the feature in the same way. If the prefered option is a test, the Growth team will have to take care of setting it up.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:04, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Edit revert rate is something we monitor for all tasks, and in a previous A/B test, we found that the revert rate for newcomers who get Add a Link is 11% lower than the baseline.

Another option is that the daily task limit can be configured to be lower. The default is currently 25, which means any new account holder that has access to the task can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks per day. Any English Wikipedia admin can update to a lower number via Special:EditGrowthConfig.

But also I just wanted to chime in and second what @Trizek (WMF) mentioned: English Wikipedia is welcome to enable the task and see how it goes. If the task is too disruptive to patrollers and experienced editors, it can be turned off. KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:20, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks both for your replies. I'm glad this can be adjusted if it gets out of hand. I don't think editors would want their watchlists filling up with a lot more to review. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

• I'm in favor of giving it a go, if any problems arise they can be discussed. Hoping this helps newbies acclimate to Wikipedia! —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:07, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
• +1 I apparently neglected to post my comment any one of the 3+ times I typed it up, but I think we should try it. We can always turn it off again if it causes problems. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 20:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

@SebastianHelm: I've just noticed that last November at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking § MOS:OVERLINK: Absolute or relative level? you asked me to ping you when there is anything new about algorithmic attempts to determine appropriate internal link density in articles. What's new is that the algorithmic links newcomer task is pretty much ready for activation at en.wp, and only a handful of people seem to care so far.

I have no idea if this is what you meant in your comment or whether you currently care about this, and rather unfortunately I couldn't think of any method of notifying you that wouldn't be considered canvassing, so I figured maximum transparency would be straight canvassing you to the discussion itself. Avoiding work, Folly Mox (talk) 12:44, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

How to enable 'Get a mentor' link?

On my Homepage I can click Get A Mentor, and it will add a mentor for me. But on my friends account that was created recently they don't have the mentor area on their Homepage. All of their settings in preferences appear the same as mine. Is there any reason only some people can see this? Does an account have to be x days old or made y many edits? For reference, their account is 3 months old and they have made 35 edits on Wikipedia and another 77 on Commons. It seems they would benefit more than me by having this on their Homepage. Jimmyjrg (talk) 00:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Jimmyjrg

We have a shortage of mentors at English Wikipedia. Hence, we only provide a mentor to 50% of newcomers. Maybe you should consider joining too!

It is possible for your friend to get a mentor: one of the listed mentors can claim them as their mentee using special:ClaimMentee. Maybe you know one of them?

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:13, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Refining the templates used for the "copy editing" task

I mentioned this over at MediaWiki and they suggested I discuss it here too so an admin can make the relevant changes if there is agreement.

My suggestion: the {{in-universe}} maint tag shouldn't be used to populate the copy-editing task, because it is really a research problem disguised as a prose problem (i.e., the main way to fix it is to go find secondary sources). I looked through the maint tags at the Guild of Copy Editors, and I think newbies would be prepared for {{cleanup tense}}, {{inappropriate person}}, and {{copy edit section}} -- but not {{copy edit inline}} (since a lot of those are actually asking for refs/research). For the inline ones I'd just do {{awkward}}, {{colloquialism}}, {{sentence fragment}}, and maybe {{expand acronym}} or {{verify spelling}}.

My reasoning: I think it's better to be very limited in the tags we point newbies to, than to misrepresent what's needed at the article they're sent to. I know there's a shortage of tasks to give to newbies, but I think it's better to say "no easy tasks available" than to send them to an article like Teen Idol (novel) and tell them it just needs a simple copy-edit. That's the first article I got when I tried out the newcomer tasks for myself, and it needs a lot of work, but it doesn't need copy-editing at all. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:40, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I intend to implement this in a few days if there are no further comments. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:53, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

{{in-universe}} might have been my idea, selected from a list of cleanup templates without actually looking at what kind of fix the transclusions indicated. I have no insights into or opposition to this proposal. I mostly gnome references. Folly Mox (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

No, it's not you, it dates back to the Growth Team's original implementation of community configuration. I think you did propose it at one point and I pointed out exactly the reason why it wasn't a good idea. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:50, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see upon reread of Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Archive 7 § Several articles are being assigned as newcomer tasks very frequently, my particularly dumb idea was {{all plot}}, although I endorsed {{in-universe}} at the time. Thanks for indulging my forgetfulness. Folly Mox (talk) 23:04, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking through this and suggesting improvements! I already mentioned this on MediaWiki, but it might be worth also sharing here:

The Growth team has investigated various ways to introduce a structured copyediting task: Structured tasks/Copyedit, since the current task is clearly not very easy. We might not move forward with that specific idea, but we certainly hope to develop more "easy" newcomer tasks tasks in the future.

We've wanted to keep at least two tasks categorized as easy in case there aren't any link suggestions available. In fact, that seems to be an issue on English Wikipedia right now: there are only a few articles that have maintenance tags indicating they need additional links. (If you are interested, you can see a breakdown of how few tasks are available in the "links" category here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewcomerTasksInfo). You will notice the "link-recommendation" task that has 50,000+ recommendations; that's a new Suggested Edit task that we are discussing in the Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task? thread. If that task is enabled, then more newcomers will be directed to those tasks rather than funneling so many new editors into copyediting. KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:42, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I've done the update proposed here. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Edit check community conversation - July 3

The topic relates to newcomers and it is also a topic that will soon be more present in Growth features. As a consequence, I'm posting it here as I believe this invite is relevant to anyone who follows this page.

The Editing team works on Edit check, a set of tools to help users understanding Wikipedia policies while they are editing. The first major Check is References check, which displays an invite to add a citation when people add a paragraph to a Wikipedia article. This project showed promising results.

The Editing team hosts a conversation on Wednesday 3 July 2024, 17:30 UTC. The subject is "Expanding Edit Check". This meeting will be hosted on Zoom, in English. (signup page)

The two main topics will be:

• CopyVio Check: learn what volunteers think of the proposed user experience for the initial version of the CopyVio Check

• Real-time Checks: learn what volunteers think about a version of Edit Check that would show people feedback, in real-time.

See you there! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Regarding mentorship questions

I'm going to turn off my mentee questions until I have more free time to edit in larger bursts. Over the past three months I have received 21 questions:

• 3 of them were general question about editing, the ones I like.
• 3 of them were "hi" posts.
• 1 of them was in a different language
• 13 of them were "I want to create an article/How does my article get reviewed" with no specifics from there.

Of these 21 questions, for 9 of them their question on my talk page was their only contribution, and 5 stopped editing shortly after the question and around a dozen edits or less. 3 currently edit actively. I highlight those 13 questions in particular because the conversation is one-sided; I try to reinvent myself and how I present my answer to their question in an original way that's relevant to them, but they're all the same and way too open-ended, and I end up sounding like a broken record. And, of those questions, they are pretty much exclusively articles and drafts that violate the big WP:NOT rules; WP:PROMOTION, WP:NOTREPOSITORY, WP:NOTBLOG, WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK, WP:NOTNEWS, and WP:INDISCRIMINATE are all present in these questions. It's just me saying no no no without actually saying no.

I put this out there to hear if anyone else is getting this unlucky with their mentee questions? And how do you resist the burnout? Panini! • 🥪 19:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised you didn't get any "help desk for the universe" questions. I seem to get a lot of those, though apparently I didn't get too many of them in the last two months. Here are my last two months' worth:

1. A (well-informed) PR person looking for advice
2. "Where do people find articles that need improving?"
   1. Another general question about editing from the same mentee
3. "How to add picture"
4. Someone with a technical question
5. "hello can i search my family name and ancestors?"
6. Another person with a technical question (since blocked for disruptive editing)
7. Someone whose edits were being reverted, in search of advice
8. "How to creat page"
9. Asking how to publish something from their sandbox (alas, nn and coi)
10. A question answered by WP:WHEN
11. Something incomprehensible
    1. And their information-free follow-up
12. A returning former mentee with a question about AWB
13. "hello"
14. Technical problems
    1. And some follow-up questions
15. "Can write any article without adding references ??" (since blocked)
16. How to find articles to work on
17. How to use cn
18. Technical problems, solved by a talk page stalker
    1. Same problem
19. Why is my page deleted
20. Edits being reverted (blocked)
21. A question about how to write a specific article
22. Technical question
23. one that needs to be seen to be believed
24. Young editor
25. WP:RS question
26. How to create page
27. "Hello, when was Wikipedia established and launched?"
28. WP:REFB question

So by my count that's:

• 4 good looking-for-advice questions that were rewarding to answer
• 6 genuine but run-of-the-mill questions
• 8 technical questions
• 3 "how to create page"
• 3 answerable-by-acronym questions
• 2 mistaking me for a universal librarian of the Internet
• 5 incomprehensible and/or disruptive
• 1 "hello"

Additionally, in that span I got someone accusing me of "proxy editing" for having assisted mentee #7. Obviously, I was not proxy editing. I've seen this happen with another mentor, who also was obviously not proxy editing. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that part of the role mentors play here is making it clear to newbies that ownership behaviour and being rude to newbies is unacceptable, and we weren't just lying about the fourth pillar as some kind of prank.

So all of that is to say, I think you've had an unfortunate run of mentee questions. As for how to resist burnout, my advice is to cease this behaviour immediately: I try to reinvent myself and how I present my answer to their question in an original way that's relevant to them. Please, this is insane. It is totally unnecessary, none of them will appreciate it anyway, and they probably won't even notice you're trying to do this. I say all of this with love and care and with the experience of having taught undergraduates for a decade. Do not waste your time and energy and goodwill on answering questions creatively when you could answer them simply. Some of these mentees might never log in again! -- asilvering (talk) 03:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice @Asilvering! You seem to have gotten a better string of questions, more in line with the ones I would expect, but you've definitely gotten some that are a lot more nuts. But I could spare being much more simple and straight to the point on my answers. Panini! • 🥪 20:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Abolish "Newcomer tasks"

As far as I can tell, this "Newcomer tasks" bullshit exists only to facilitate disruptive edits.

Here is a list of every "Newcomer task" edit I have stumbled upon, in the order I found them:

• Special:Diff/1233198616, which I reverted because, though made in good faith, it mostly just messed up the article.
• Special:Diff/1233193481, which was reverted because it turned a normal article into an advert.
• Special:Diff/1233347947, which I partially reverted because it altered a direct quote from a source.
• Special:Diff/1233351743, which I reverted because it was a blatant copyvio.

You will notice that the "copyeditor" in those last two edits is unable to spell the word "grammar". It is not a typo as it happened twice.

I then looked at the history of the last article, which has for some reason had a number of "Newcomer task" edits over the past few years. I looked at this string of eight edits, which had a few good changes, a few neutral rewordings, and a number of bad changes. I decided I can't be bothered to go through them one by one and fix what's wrong and instead came here to complain.

Who thought it would be a good idea to invite new editors, who are not fully familiar with wikitext, have zero knowledge of the Manual of Style and policies such as on copyright, and in many cases are not native English speakers and do not have a good command of English, to perform copyediting?

I propose that the "Newcomer tasks" feature be discontinued. Un assiolo (talk) 17:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This edit at the last article changed British spellings to American and was subsequently reverted. A later edit changed some of them again and has not yet been reverted. I haven't even gone through every "Newcomer task" edit on this article, and this is just one article! --Un assiolo (talk) 17:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@Un assiolo, newcomers are sent to this page because of the advert maintenance tag. I've simply removed the tag; newcomer module-attracted attention should cease. I'm not sure what task you envision for new editors, since we discourage them from starting new articles and you wish to dissuade them from making minor changes as well. -- asilvering (talk) 19:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

To the extent Un assiolo is making a broader complaint and just using that article as an example, removing the advert tag on just that article does nothing to address the systemic issue.

I agree, though, that we need to invite newcomers to contribute somewhere, and smaller edits will be better for that than article creation. Ideally, if the advert tag is attracting editors doing the copy editing task, those editors should be given specific guidance that the likely problems in the article have to do with promotionalism, and that the fixes should be things like neutral language, not ENGVAR changes. Sdkb ^talk 19:55, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that removing the advert tag does nothing to address the systemic issue, but I don't agree that new editors making "bad" edits is a systemic issue, so I had nothing to say in that regard. -- asilvering (talk) 20:27, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

As Sdkb said, this isn't about any particular article; these edits are problematic across the board. I've been looking at recent changes tagged as "Newcomer task", and perhaps a third of them need to be reverted, and another third are not revert-worthy but not very useful, either. Only a third are unequivocally good, and the bad ones create a lot of work for other editors, if they get spotted at all. I can post a detailed breakdown if you want.

As for what newbies should do, I don't think we should be directing them to do anything specific. They should just make changes when they see an article that needs to be changed. Is that not realistic? --Un assiolo (talk) 21:59, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Growth Team features#Background and results has some data you might be interested in. Newcomers using these features are (or were, in 2021 when these were tested) reverted less often than normal newcomer edits - they're just easier for other editors to find, so we end up in a selection bias trap since the ones we notice are the bad ones. The specific maintenance tags that are suggested for these features is handled by each wiki, so we can turn on ones we want to send more attention to, and turn off ones that are causing too much trouble. I don't know if we have any means of tracking which might be causing more trouble than others. -- asilvering (talk) 22:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The issues with WP:ENGVAR have been raised for a couple of years, the feature creation team was not initially aware that there were multiple English varieties. It was proposed a note on engvar would be added to MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-vector-visualeditor-copyedit-main-rules1, but that seems not to have progressed further. CMD (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

the feature creation team was not initially aware that there were multiple English varieties – I... what? Really? That's concerning. – Joe (talk) 13:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I brought up some proposed improvements awhile back at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 7 § Let's configure: Suggested Edits, which never went anywhere.

I don't believe the issue lies with the feature itself, but rather largely with extremely limited guidance, the fact that it remains mostly in vanilla default despite years to configure to serve our particular project better, and some of the presentation. For example, the Suggested Edits overlay will highlight the "edit lead section" icon, inviting the editor to click there, rather than highlighting "learn more" on the maintenance template adding the article to the task pool.

Low key difficult to believe ENGVAR still isn't in any of the messages for the copyedit task, despite having no opposition against including it in each discussion it's been brought up. Then again, despite the impact of this feature, community engagement with improving its outcomes has been very low in the experienced editor base. Maybe what we really need is some cowpoke admin to start making improvements without a generated consensus. Folly Mox (talk) 14:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

You've found your cowpoke! But seriously, since the default texts were generated off-project, I see no need for a prior consensus to improve them. If you have suggestions and nobody objections to them, let's do it. – Joe (talk) 14:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

bless you, seriously. -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps adding "Spelling words in a different variety of English is not considered an error, and such words should be left as originally written."? CMD (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

In case anyone was interested: a previous discussion suggesting some templates to remove from the copyedit task configuration, another later discussion that suggested template changes to the copyedit task, the engvar discussion, and a discussion on mediawiki where Growth Team WMF members were explaining copyedit. Some actions seem to have been taken on those first two discussions, but not all of the suggestions were implemented. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 15:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)