Ed Erhart (WMF)
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This Month in GLAM: April 2024
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This Month in Education: April 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 4 • April 2024
This Month in GLAM: May 2024
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This Month in Education: May 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 5 • May 2024
- Albania - Georgia Wikimedia Cooperation 2024
- Aleksandër Xhuvani University Editathon in Elbasan
- Central Bicol State University of Agriculture LitFest features translation and article writing on Wikipedia
- Empowering Youth Council in Bulqiza through editathons
- We left a piece of our hearts at Arhavi
- Wiki Movimento Brasil at Tech Week and Education Speaker Series
- Wikimedia MKD trains new users in collaboration with MYLA
This Month in Education: June 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 6 • June 2024
- From a Language Teacher to a Library Support Staff: The Wikimedia Effect
- 5th WikiEducation 2024 Conference in Mexico
- Lviv hosted a spring wikischool for Ukrainian high school students
- First class of teachers graduated from Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom 2024
- Empowering Digital Citizenship: Unlocking the Power of Open Knowledge with Participants of the LIFE Legacy
- Wiki Movimento Brazil supports online and in-person courses and launches material to guide educators in using Wikimedia projects
- Where to find images for free? Webinar for librarians answered many questions
- Wikimedia MKD and University of Goce Delchev start a mutual collaboration
This Month in GLAM: June 2024
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Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2024
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Hello, and welcome to the app's second newsletter in 2024!
In this edition, we will review our achievements and progress from the first half of 2024!
- Android
- Edit Patrol is now available on production for all Wikis!
- Donation through G-Pay is now available within the app.
- iOS
- "Add an image" suggested edit is available for all Wikis! It is available to all users with more than 50 edits.
- We now support full-page editing on Talk pages.
And you can subscribe to this newsletter.
Growth News, July 2024
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Community Configuration
editThe 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
editNewcomer 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
editIncrease 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
editGrowth 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)
This Month in GLAM: July 2024
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This Month in GLAM: August 2024
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This Month in Education: August 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 7 • August 2024
- Cross-Cultural Knowledge Sharing: Wikipedia's New Frontier at University of Tehran
- Let's Read Wikipedia in Bolivia reaches teachers in Cochabamba
- Results of the 2023 “Wikipedia for School” Contest in Ukraine
- Edu Wiki Camp in Serbia, 2024
- Wikimedia Human Rights Month this year engaged schools in large amount
- Strengthening Education Programs at Wikimania 2024: A Global Leap in Collaborative Learning
- Wiki Education programs are featured in a scientific outreach magazine, and Wiki Movimento Brasil offers training for researchers in the Amazon
- Wiki Movimento Brasil aims to adapt a game about Wikipedia, organize an academic event for scientific dissemination, and host the XXXIII Wiki-Education Workshop
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2024
editHello, and welcome to the app's third newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we will highlight the accomplishments and progress made during July, August, and September 2024!
iOS Updates
Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature across both iOS and Android! (T372954), good opportunity to try it yourself ;) This tool allows users to enhance Wikipedia articles by adding relevant images. It’s a great way to contribute and improve the visual experience for readers.
The iOS team kicked off the Alt Text experiment to improve image descriptions for accessibility. This feature helps ensure that visually impaired users can better understand the content of images through descriptive text.
The iOS App has been transitioning from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports both reading and editing. After adding a number of editing features, the navigation system of the app needs to grow and change to support them and future additions. Improving our navigation will allow for more app users to discover editing features, and allow experienced users quicker access to their most-used tools. This refresh incorporates findings from usability testing with multiple variants of the App's navigation. The team is currently planning phased rollouts over the coming year to improve user experience. (Phase 1: T373714)
Android Updates
Improvements were made to the Places feature in response to user feedback, including larger cluster icons and a Wikipedia logo for articles without images (T371067, T370094). Also, the team is exploring designs to allow users to explore articles from multiple language wikis simultaneously and will adjust the zoom logic to show nearby locations upon launch (T352757, T368792).
- WikiTrivia Game
The team prepared for the WikiTrivia Game during a hackathon, selecting a data source and creating initial designs (T371508, T371510).
Work began on adding Recommended Content to search, iterating on design concepts and testing performance (T371613).
The team is now engaging with several wikis to implement Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions based on prior experimental results.
- Sharing reading lists
Android users can now share reading lists with others, expanding community collaboration (T370703).
And some performance enhancements: Revision tags for app edits were successfully implemented (T366731, T366732).
The app now supports URL sharing on Pixel devices, thanks to volunteer developer contributions (T370020).
Stay tuned for future updates as we continue to enhance your Wikipedia experience! And you can subscribe to this newsletter.
--17:17, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: September 2024
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Growth News, October 2024
edit Current work
editNewcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
Constructive activation experimentation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
- The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
- Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
Future work
editAs part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Community events
edit- Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
- Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.
Stay informed
editGrowth 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.
This Month in GLAM: October 2024
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This Month in Education: October 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 8 • October 2024
- CBSUA Wiki Education turns 1 year
- 7th Senior WikiTown took place in Becov nad Teplou, Czech Republic
- Edit-a-thon about Modern Architecture in Kosovo
- Empowering Digital Literacy through Wikimedia in South Sudan
- Many new articles and contributions in September and October for Wikimedia MKD
- New Record: 5 Events in Municipal Library within a Month
- Wiki-Education programs in Brazil are centered around the Wikidata and Wikisource platforms
- WikiChallenge African Schools wins the “Open Pedagogy” Award 2024 from OE Global
- Wikipedia helps in improving cognitive skills
- Wikipedia in Graduate Studies: Expanding Research Impact
- WiLMa PH establishes a Wiki Club
This Month in Education: November 2024
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Volume 13 • Issue 9 • November 2024
- Auckland Museum Wikipedia Student Programme
- Citizenship and free knowledge on Wikipedia in Albanian language
- Engaging students with Wikipedia and Wikidata at Hasanuddin University’s Wikimedia Week
- Minigrant initiative by empowering the Rrëshen community in Albania
- Wikidata birthday in Albania, 2024
- Wikidata birthday in School
- Wikimedia Education Workshop at Lumbini Technological University
- Wikimedia MKD's new collaborations and new content
- Improving Historical Knowledge on Persian Wikipedia through a continuous Wikimedia Education Program: Shahid Beheshti University Wikipedia Education Program
This Month in GLAM: November 2024
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Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Fourth quarter of 2024
editHello, and welcome to the app's final newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we’ll highlight the key updates and progress made during October and November 2024!
iOS Updates
Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review
In November, we released the first iteration of the Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review to users in Italy and Mexico, covering Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedia! This experimental feature offers personalized insights based on reading, editing, and donation history for iOS app users for 2024. If this initial version is successful, we hope to improve upon it and make it available to everyone within the iOS app in January 2025. For more information on how your data is used and how to access your Year in Review, please visit the project page, or watch a short video demonstration of the feature.
The alternative text experiment concluded on November 4, and we are currently analyzing the results. The edits are being reviewed by accessibility experts and moderators active on the iOS app for additional feedback.
Preliminary results show that prompting users on an image they’ve just added leads to higher completion rates (18%) compared to unrelated images (6%). The overall revert rate for alt text edits was 3.4%, lower than the app’s average revert rate of 8.1%. We’ll decide next steps for this feature after completing the analysis.
We completed the first phase of our Navigation refresh, and released a new profile menu into the production version of the app. Our work was coordinated in this Epic: T373714
Android Updates
Private Donor Recognition Experiment
We launched an experiment in France and the Netherlands, exploring the impact of private donor recognition on current and prospective donors. Users who donated through the app will see an active badge on the contributions page, while those who haven’t donated will see a prompt to do so. The experiment will run for 20 days, after which we will evaluate the results. This work was coordinated under Epic: T376303.
The team began work on the "Rabbit Holes" experiment to increase retention among new readers. The experiment is designed to help users more easily discover and connect with content they are interested in. It is being coordinated under Epic: T378612.
The Recommended Content in Search experiment showed promising results. Personalized recommendations led to higher retention (86.5%) compared to non-personalized recommendations (64.9%), with positive feedback from users.
We added a launcher shortcut for quicker access to the "Places" feature in the app. (T375367)
Looking Ahead
As we close out 2024, we’re excited about all the progress made and the work ahead in 2025. Keep an eye out for more updates and improvements we hope will enhance your Wikipedia experience!
Thank you for being part of this journey, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!
This Month in GLAM: December 2024
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This Month in Education: January 2025
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Volume 14 • Issue 1 • January 2025
- Advancing Education Pillar in Kosovo: 2024 Journey
- Auckland Museum Wikipedia Students Making Progress
- Celebrating 10 Years of Wiki Education
- Empowering Multilingual Students: Expanding Wikipedia Through Collaboration of foreign languages faculty's students of the University of Tehran
- Ensuring accurate and authentic information with 1Lib1Ref Campaign in Anambra
- Experiences of Wikipedia in the classroom with a gender perspective in Monterrey
- Fine Arts University Students exploring Wikipedia in Tirana, Albania
- Lviv hosted Ukraine’s first student photo walk for Wikipedia
- Many new trained volunteers and new articles at the end of the year in Macedonia
- Wikimedia and Scientific Events in Brazil
- Wiki Workshop- Call for Contributions
This Month in GLAM: January 2025
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Growth Newsletter #33
edit A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.
This year, the Growth team is exploring ways to help more new account holders start editing—and do so constructively, meaning their edits are not reverted. Our latest experiments include:
- Gradual rollout of "Add a Link" at English Wikipedia – We are gradually introducing the "Add a Link" structured task to newcomers at English Wikipedia (T386029). This serves as a natural A/B test to measure its impact on activation, retention, and revert rates (T382603). Previous experiments on pilot wikis showed that "Add a Link" increases newcomer participation, particularly by helping them make constructive (non-reverted) edits.
- Testing in-article suggestions for first-time editors – Many new account holders want to contribute but don’t know where to start. To help, we’re piloting a feature that surfaces structured task suggestions directly in an article’s read view for brand-new editors (T385343). These suggestions will appear for logged-in users with no edits, providing a clear, simple way to begin contributing that is surfaced while they read.
Newcomers often struggle to find their place in Wikipedia’s collaborative environment. While experienced editors easily discover events like edit-a-thons and writing campaigns, newcomers often miss out.
- To bridge this gap, we launched the Community Updates module for the Newcomer Homepage. This module is disabled by default, allowing Community Admins to decide how (or if) to use it.
- If your community hosts events, consider setting up a Community Update to engage and welcome newcomers! Learn more on Diff. To configure, visit Special:CommunityConfiguration.
Community Configuration is now available across all wikis, including non-Wikipedia projects (T383910). Community Configuration allows admins to customize various features like Growth features and Automoderator for their communities, and more recently the Babel extension now allows admins to modify configuration:
- Babel customization – Admins can now configure Babel settings (T374348), including category naming, automatic category creation, and more. See an example on Wikimedia Commons.
- Upcoming configurable features – Projects exploring community configuration options include: Incident Reporting System (T374113) and Cite backlinks (T378807).
Mentors play a key role in guiding new editors. If you’re interested in mentoring, or turning mentorship on at your wiki, check out the Mentorship FAQ
- Starting February 17, 100% of new accounts at English Wikipedia will be assigned a mentor (T384505).
- At Spanish Wikipedia, on 50% of newcomers get a mentor. Experienced contributors are encouraged to join mentorship so that Spanish Wikipedia can provide a mentor to all new users.
Looking Ahead
editIn the coming months, we will continue balancing maintenance work—such as deprecating EditGrowth Config (T367574) and migrating Statslib (T359352) — with user-facing improvements that support new editors and foster the next generation of contributors.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:00, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: February 2025
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This Month in Education: February 2025
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Volume 14 • Issue 2 • February 2025
- Activities series at the Shefit Hekali school in Peqin, Albania
- Wikimedia Brazil has formed a partnership with a public policy research institute
- Preserving Heritage: Tuluvas Aati Month Educational Wikimedia Programs
- Reflecting on our Past: Farewell to the Auckland Museum Summer Students
- Successful Conclusion of the Second Phase of "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" in Yemen
- Wiki Workshop in Mitrovica
- Wikimedia MKD' Education: Lots of new trained users, lots of new articles
- Wikimedia Serbia receives accreditation from the National Library of Serbia for the Wiki Senior seminar
WP 25: symbols etc
editHi Ed, do you know if or when c:Category:Wikipedia 25 will contain some graphic work or symbols released by the WMF to be used by the movement? Best regards Christoph Jackel (WMDE) 11:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Christoph Jackel (WMDE): With the significant caveat that our timeline is still being developed, we are expecting to have some sort of visuals completed in July 2025. We don't know yet what form those will take, e.g. if they will be similar to the WP20 graphics. Ed WMF [talk] 16:45, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
This Month in GLAM: March 2025
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This Month in Education: March 2025
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Volume 14 • Issue 3 • March 2025
- A Whole New World: Research Findings on New Editor Integration in Serbian Wikipedia
- Bolivia: a new round of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia
- Faculty of Social Sciences Workshop in Albania
- Lots of contributions and trainings as part of Wikimedia MKD's Education Programme
- Wikimedia organized multiple events of science and education in Brazil during the month of March
Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2025
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Hello, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through the exciting updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps during December, January, and February.
iOS
editPersonalized Wikipedia Year in Review
We released the improved version of the Year in Review to all users, now available in multiple languages and for both logged-in and logged-out users. While donation rates were lower than our goal, we saw great engagement with the feature & it brought in a higher share of first-time donors and a higher average donation compared to banner campaigns.
Notably:
- 97.4% of survey respondents rated the experience as neutral or better.
- We saw a 74% increase in new accounts, with 368 new editors actively contributing as a result.
- Most users asked for more personalized stats and a better summary of their reading journey.
We’re excited by the results and are already thinking ahead about how to improve it further next year. Want more details? You can check out the full analysis on the project page on MediaWiki.
Alt Text Experiment Wrap-Up
Our 60-day alternative text experiment has ended. While users showed interest in the task, quality was a challenge—especially for newcomers. The experiment helped us understand how we can guide editors better when writing alt text and which improvements to focus on next.
Some key takeaways:
- Completion rates were decent (28% for newer editors), but the quality of the alternative text needed improvement.
- Many users wanted clearer guidance and better context for writing alt text.
- Many users expressed interest in a dedicated feed for image-related tasks.
We’re not making the alternative text suggested edit permanent at this time. If we decided to focus on this task again, we would invest in improved guidance for writing alternative text, and make improvements to the user flow.
We made significant progress in refreshing the app’s navigation. Highlights include:
- A more native iOS feel with system-standard navigation bars.
- New access points for the Profile menu across multiple screens.
- Ongoing A/B testing of a more prominent search bar in articles, available in Arabic, French, German, and Japanese.
We also began tracking where article views come from (e.g., from Places, History, or Explore), which will help us understand user behavior better.
Tabbed Browsing Begins
We kicked off discovery and design work for adding tabs to the iOS app—one of the most requested features! Based on user feedback and inspiration from other apps, we’ve created a prototype and started user testing. Stay tuned as this exciting feature continues to evolve!
Bug Fixes & Developer Contributions
Thanks to volunteer contributions and internal efforts, we fixed several bugs including:
- Search results overlapping with the status bar.
- Crashes while editing specific articles.
- Incorrect day shown in “In the News.”
- Improved handling of italics and language variants.
Android
editWe released the Wikipedia Game to production in German Wikipedia and began work on WikiTrivia using “On this day” content. User feedback from initial testing is helping shape both features.
Private Donor Recognition Experiment
We wrapped up our donor recognition experiment in France and the Netherlands. While overall donations were lower than expected, user feedback was clear:
- 81% of surveyed users want the dashboard to exist on multiple platforms.
- 39% of users who saw the donor icon feature chose to personalize their app icon.
- Many users prefer automatic updates to their donor stats without manual input.
Rabbit Holes
To improve reader retention, we tested two approaches: suggested articles in search and personalized reading lists. Results showed strong engagement:
- 93.3% of feedback was positive or neutral.
- Pageviews were significantly higher for users who engaged with the feature.
- Users preferred reading lists over suggested search results.
We've started migrating our Android layouts to Jetpack Compose to modernize the app and improve performance long-term.
Other Fixes & Enhancements
- Fixed bugs related to offline article loading, push notifications, and language variants.
- Enhanced language support in captions and local language display.
Looking Ahead
From improving editing tasks to adding new ways to discover content and expanding personalization—this quarter was packed with learning and progress. Your feedback continues to shape where we go next.
Make sure you’re subscribe to this newsletter to stay in the loop, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us!