Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

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)

Help page for update

I was reviewing Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits and noticed that the help page for the "Update" task is Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, which is an obsolete page from 2016. I couldn't find any help page on the concept of updating articles, and phab:T370326 means I can't just blank the field like I wanted to. Any ideas on what help page to use here? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:31, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I've been attempting to consider this since yesterday, and the only thing I've thought of that could be helpful as a standalone help link here is Help:Find sources. Often I find articles transcluding this template need an IABot run, MOS fixes, wikilink fixes, and more, but updating the article prose will typically require tracking down sources that are not already present in the article. Other helpful guidance is MOS:SINCE and Wikipedia:As of, but neither of these I feel warrants a link at this position. Folly Mox (talk) 10:30, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Should we maybe just disable this task? -- asilvering (talk) 19:37, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Disable the entire "update" task? Why? The devs are working on fixing the help page bug so we can just have only the embedded guidance without a learn more page. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:21, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The "why" is because, as Folly Mox points out, articles transcluding the template tend to require a wide variety of fixes, as well as an effort to track down more up-to-date sources. That suggests it's not really the entry-level type of task we want these suggested tasks to be. -- asilvering (talk) 20:24, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I've blanked the help page for update, so it now displays without a "learn more". Any other admin is welcome to do what they see fit here. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:27, 18 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)

Restored subheading

Sometime last week I had written up a full proposal for implementing improvements in the Help Panel links and SuggestedEdit tips, but had the temerity and poor judgement to tab into a separate app to answer a time sensitive text, so my browser unloaded the editor and discarded all my work. I hate this new phone.

Anyway, here's what we have now for Help Panel links (editable at the bottom of Special:EditGrowthConfig):

1. Wikipedia:Writing better articles, linked as How to write a good article
2. Help:Introduction to editing with VisualEditor/1, linked as How to edit a page
3. Help:Introduction to images with VisualEditor/1, linked as How to add an image
4. Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/1, linked as How to edit a citation
5. Wikipedia:Article wizard, linked as How to create a new article
6. Help:Contents, linked as View more help articles (linktext appears hardcoded in this case)

I'd propose the following set as a replacement:

1. Help:Introduction/All, linktext Introduction and tutorials. This page is the parent of all three tutorials linked in the vanilla setup.
2. Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style, linktext Simplified Manual of Style.
3. I don't remember what I suggested here last time, but I wasn't sold on it and considered a lot of different options, including WP:TEA, WP:42, WP:ACM, and WP:REFB. Anybody else have any better ideas?
4. Wikipedia:Writing better articles, linktext How to write a good article (i.e. move existing link 1 to position 4)
5. Help:Your first article, linktext How to create a new article (i.e. change target only). Wikipedia:Article wizard is not appropriate for new accounts. I'd prefer if User:Houseblaster/YFA draft had been moved out of userspace last year, since I think the streamlined approach is superior to the existing help page, but that never got consensus.
6. Help:Contents (no change)

MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-vector-visualeditor-copyedit-main-rules1 currently outputs You can fix spelling and grammar errors. This might include sentences that are too long, repeated words, or incorrect punctuation. We should append to this: English Wikipedia uses [[MOS:ENGVAR|different varieties of English]] (color / colour, traveled / travelled). Variant spellings are not errors.

This is something of a compromise between CMD's suggestion upthread and Trizek's suggestion in Archive 5 (linked above), with added examples for clarity. With the understanding that including an outlink in the tip has the potential to break workflow, this is a page we want new editors to read. If there's a tradeoff, like a subset of newcomers who click through to MOS:ENGVAR from the tips decide not to make an edit after all, I think we can live with that.

MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-vector-visualeditor-copyedit-example-rules2 currently outputs Jupiter is the largest, and most interesting, planet in the Solar System. (containing <mark>...</mark> tags that refuse to embed inside {{xt}}.) This should be changed to a more realistic example, like Her immense talent marked her as a rising star in the industry. Open to better suggestions, but this is the kind of thing we actually have to deal with, as everyone here is obviously aware, not which planets are better, and might be the kind of problem that caused someone to add the maintenance template including the article in the copyedit task pool.

MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-vector-visualeditor-copyedit-main-step1 currently outputs Once you see a correction you want to make, click "$1" to get started. Then go ahead and fix issues by deleting and typing as needed. This is where we should highlight the fact that the article an edit is being suggested at has a known issue. Something like The orange banner at the top of the page indicates the kind of corrections this article needs. Click "learn more" in the banner for more information. Then, once you see a correction you want to make, click "$1" to get started. Go ahead and fix issues by deleting and typing as needed. (Incidentally, on my device, "$1" outputs "the edit pencil on that section", and "click" displays as "tap".)

Well, I have to go to work. Pinging Joe Roe. Folly Mox (talk) 11:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC) edited 09:01, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Also, I think that a better value for "Destination page for learning more about adding references" under the reference task at Special:EditGrowthConfig would be Wikipedia:Citing sources, replacing Wikipedia:Verifiability. Folly Mox (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done that, which seems uncontroversial. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:44, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I endorse all of the changes you've written in paragraphs here. For the Help Panel links, my experience as a mentor suggests to me that we really do need obvious direct links like items 1-4 in the current help panel, though I do really appreciate the link to the simplified MOS. Your change to #4, though, I agree with completely. -- asilvering (talk) 22:27, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I seem to remember a discussion somewhere that indicated that the help panel links to "add an image" and "edit a citation" were the result of some research, and I'm a little bit ho-hum about changing those in particular. Special:EditGrowthConfig recommends in its boilerplate a link to the MOS in position #1, and I think we're doing newcomers a bit of a disservice making them hunt for it: as it stands, they're likely to encounter the term "MOS" for the first time when one of their edits is reverted or when someone drops a welcome-warning template on their talk page letting them know they've violated some rule they've never heard of.

Can you elucidate a little bit about how your experience as a mentor indicates direct links to certain technical tutorials in the help panel? Are you pointing people to them regularly? Folly Mox (talk) 00:18, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

For something like ENGVAR, I think alerting editors who try to change things in-editor through edit check would be a better approach than trying to educate them off the bat. ENGVAR is important for established editors to know, but for newcomers trying to absorb an overwhelming number of rules, educating about it is lower on my priority list than educating about the basics of encyclopedic tone, etc (an article that temporarily has its ENGVAR changed is not particularly damaged). Granted, it may be a bit before we have edit check available for stuff like this. Sdkb ^talk 22:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree that placing an ENGVAR callout in a SuggestedEdit tip overlay isn't the ideal place to give new editors a heads up about it, but given how frequently "You can correct spelling and grammar errors" is interpreted as "alter correct spelling to one I'm more familiar with", how much it seems to bother established editors, and the negative experience of having a very early edit reverted — I think mentioning it up front is better than waiting till it's transgressed: better experience for newcomers and for watchlisters, and a timesave for those of us who take it upon ourselves to engage with the newcomers rather than straight reverting with a terse "MOS:ENGVAR".

I'd be fine with leaving out the link and retaining the examples of variant spellings. Folly Mox (talk) 00:06, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Done that without the link. I see this as more of a subtle nudge than another entry in an overwhelming ruleset to follow. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:52, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I've done two of the easier changes (link to WP:Citing sources and using a better advert text example). Note that the editing UI for this recently changed, we now have Special:CommunityConfiguration instead of Special:EditGrowthConfig.

Re the change to MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-vector-visualeditor-copyedit-main-step1, there could be more than one orange banner, and some of them could be for non-newcomer task things. Or the banner could be yellow instead of orange ({{copyedit}} is by default). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:44, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Also the banners might not be at the top, or might not exist at all. {{copy edit section}} and inline templates line {{Verify spelling}} also populate the task. I think this point is morphing into something that needs to be a new Phabricator task rather than something we can community configure. And Folly Mox is actually seeing the unrelated message MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-help-panel-suggestededits-tips-minerva-visualeditor-copyedit-main-step1, which would also need to be overriden.

Fine with the help panel change - I'll do that in a few days unless an objection is raised.

And I agree with Folly Mox on the ENGVAR issue - until edit check is set up and working then it's better to mention it than not. I'm also fine with it without the link. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:35, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The maintenance template may also be nested inside {{Multiple issues}}, which has a circled exclamation point rather than "Learn more", at least in Minerva, at least if I remember correctly. Clearly the banner situation is a lot more complicated than the single case hastily typed out just before leaving for work earlier this week. Withdrew the suggestion for the wording change there. Folly Mox (talk) 09:01, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I have made some changes to the help panel per the discussion here (I kept the individual introduction/tutorials links, added the simplified manual of style, and changed the page for your first article). Anything else will have to be done by someone else, as I'm planning on resigning adminship soon but did not want to leave this completely hanging. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:52, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and if we do the one-tutorial link we should use Help:Introduction/Visual editor instead of Help:Introduction/All which uses the wikitext editor. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

And it turns out the Community Configuration software was broken resulting in me accidentally blanking the entire help panel (User talk:Pppery#Please redo your changes to the help-links). Sigh. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about this! The CommunityConfiguration extension was just released to all wikis last week, so we are still working out some quirks and making improvements. We've been testing the new extension on beta wikis and on test wiki, and then on pilot wikis before this release to English Wikipedia... but inevitably we didn't catch all possible edge cases and bugs.

The Growth team will keep working to make Community Configuration more stable and further improve error checking. And in the meantime, thanks to everyone in this thread for thinking through which help docs are most meaningful to new editors. - KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:38, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Mentor status

I want to thank the WMF for instituting a Growth Team and actively working toward productive editor retention. It is truly a worthy cause. I wish you nothing but success in the future. However, I am removing myself as a mentor. I don't feel I can give it the proper attention moving forward and there are situations that have arisen which challenge my views of ENWP. I do hope some of these things will change as old view points die out. I realize WP is slow to change and so I am hopeful. However, I do not feel I can actively promote and support editing on the encyclopedia as it currently stands. As such I do not think it proper to continue as a mentor of others in a program designed toward editor retention so long as I hold to that position. It has been an honor to be a mentor and also a Teahouse hostess during this time. I have learned so much from all the wonderful people that take this task seriously. I want you to know that I do too. So much so that I am willing to give it up when I don't think I can continue rather than hold on to it. I want nothing but the best outcomes for the mentorship program. --ARoseWolf 16:23, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the time you spent helping newcomers, @ARoseWolf. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:09, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Growth News, July 2024

Community Configuration

The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.

This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.

You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.

If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!

Current work

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

Future work

Increase constructive activation on mobile

As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.

Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.

Stay informed

Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

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

15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

articletopic and its intersection with Suggested Edits

I've noticed just now that not all of the available articletopics listed at :mw:ORES/Articletopic § Taxonomy are available at Special:Homepage/suggested-edits. Specifically, the following articletopics are not presented as options:

• internet-culture (~5k articles)
• linguistics (~207k)
• books (~64k)
• radio (~32k)
• software (~20k)
• geographical (~302k)
• libraries-and-information (~3k)
• space (~41k)

(although these final two may be wrapped up by the label "General Science", which I assume maps to stem). The catchalls media and visual-arts also don't seem to be represented. My vdiff may contain inaccuracies.

What is the reasoning behind these unincluded topics? Folly Mox (talk) 10:50, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I quickly skimmed around, and found this: "The ORES model we use now offers 64 topics, and we chose to expose 39 of them to newcomers."

If I remember correctly the 2019 discussions around this, the goal was to provide a number of topics that would not be overwhelming. Also, we selected the (groups of) topics that returned the highest number of articles at most mid-sized Wikipedias. Variations regarding contents are important wiki to wiki; English Wikipedia is always the exception. :)

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:39, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Fascinating. I can see why we might want to avoid driving newcomers to "internet culture", but I'm not sure what could be wrong with "books" or "radio". -- asilvering (talk) 20:36, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

We’ve been exploring ways to introduce more granular topic filtering in the future. For example, many newcomers prefer editing articles related to their home region, but we currently don’t offer the ability to filter suggestions by country. This is something we're actively researching: Research on Language-Agnostic Topic Classification by Country.

As we incorporate this level of granularity into the UI, we could also consider expanding filtering options for other topics, while ensuring the user experience remains simple and intuitive. KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:54, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, I just wanted to clarify that it’s not that we are only exposed 39 of the 64 topics — it’s that we combined some of them so that it was a smaller number of topics for newcomers to review and select. 

If we eventually add in more topic granularity (like being able to filter by countries or smaller geographic regions) then we will also need to rethink the UX of the filtering to allow for that additional complexity, and at that point maybe we should consider breaking up some of these categories if it makes sense. KStoller-WMF (talk) 00:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, apologies for the inclarity in my OP: it's obvious that geographical subregions are bundled into macroregions, and I only realised after creating the list that space and libraries-and-information are likely subsumed under "General Science". books, radio and software could be made accessible to (albeit not individually selectable by) Newcomer Tasks if the parent category media were included. I think linguistics and geographical would be nice for people to see. Maybe some other topics could be bundled into their parent topics to create some space and prevent overwhelm? I do realise en.wp is an outlier, with better coverage than other wikis under consideration. Folly Mox (talk) 16:17, 10 September 2024 (UTC)