NKohli (WMF)

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Hello, NKohli (WMF). Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 15:48, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Last minute call for jurors at the Wiki Science Competition

Hi, I don't if you crossed some the messages I left on wikipedia, wikidata commons and wikiveristy about this event.

I am checking with Ivo Kruusamägi from Wikimedia Estonia the composition of the final jury. We did our best to keep it balanced by continent, gender, field etc but in the end it is still a little bit eurocentric. I mean, it is good they are not all from Estonia and Italy, but of course it could have been better. Finding 15 names (and other one for more national juries) to help was not easy... I did gather some "maybes" from China and India in private that might be used next time, including people in national juries that we can promote but so far I could only reduce the gender unbalance.

I hope that the results will promote science around the globe in any case. As a last appropriate effort now that more urgent issues have been addressed and we are finalizing the main organization, I am looking all the profiles of active wikimedians from or related to Africa, South American Oceania or Asia with a possible public name and surname (jurors should be transparent) and a scientific or technological education or position. Like yours.

Would you be interested in joining us to be a juror in the second-level jury? I am sure that next time we will find new additional contacts and I will find your name not at the last minute. Of course, if we can finally get two or three new names, we can promote one of them to the final jury too.

Even you don't have time, could you help us also in promoting the event amongst people you know or mailing lists or groups you have joined? This will be also useful to promote more national juries next time.

I found your WMF username, I don't have to check if you have another SUL. I am not following the relationship with WMF, I am devoting my time to set up the juries and promotes the event amongst wikimedian. If there is any shortcircuit at the communication level, my apologies!

In any case thank you in advance.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Alexmar983:. I'd be thrilled to be on the jury if there's no restrictions about WMF employees being on the panel. I can't think of many names outside of the Foundation to nominate for the jury. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I tell Ivo for the final arrangement. In the meantime I check if you hve and create a wikidata item. Do you have another non-WMF account?--Alexmar983 (talk) 02:39, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, my non-WMF account is NiharikaKohli. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:13, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Ops I made a mistake in the small time I had to find people I only check names and towns. But d:Q42134287 is not you, you don't have a publication record. We agreed to enlarge the juries to people without publication records that have wikimedia expertise in any case, but I can't put a wikidata link to your profile. We have to add SUL link to the profile. I have to figure this out.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:52, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

In the end we had enough Indians, so I looked for more jurors from other countries. Thank you in any case. In two years when they will make an Indian competition (probably) I'll inform you again.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Copypatrol is down

Hi Niharika. Copypatrol has been down for about two hours; "Slim application error". Any help would be appredciated. Thanks, Ninja Diannaa (talk) 15:24, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Bot has stopped

The copypatrol page has no new listings for more than eight hours. I suspect the bot is down. Could you take a look please when you get a chance? Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 23:30, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't seem down anymore, is it? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

It is was working again. I don't know if it re-started on its own or if someone fixed it. But now it appears to have stopped again, as there's been no new reports for 4.5 hours. I have also alerted User:ערן at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 13:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me that the last record is from ~25 minutes ago. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Reports have resumed posting at the normal rate as of 17:26. I will continue to monitor. Ninja Diannaa (talk) 18:49, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I still have a bad feeling that something is wrong. There's been no new reports for five hours, and there's normally three to five every hour. Diannaa (talk) 21:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I think you're right. No new records since a long while. This is troubling. I've created a ticket to look at this (phab:T183913). Hopefully we'll find a fix for it quickly enough. Thanks for reporting. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi again. The bot seems to have stopped again. There's been no new reports for twelve hours. Any assistance you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: I'm looking into this. I'm not sure what's wrong but I think Eran's bot might have stopped working. There was a maintenance reboot for Labs tools yesterday. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: This is a bigger problem that what happened in previous cases. I have filed a ticket here: task T185163 and am awaiting Eran's response on it. He's the author of Eranbot (which is used by CopyPatrol to get records) and he's the only one familiar with how that bot actually works. I'll keep you updated on the progress. Thanks for alerting me. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:20, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Diannaa (talk) 07:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Community Tech bot for Vietnamese Wikipedia

Hi NKohli, I was lead to your talk page via the guide at en:User:Community Tech bot. If this wrong place to ask request, please forgive me :-). Could you please support a database report as Wikipedia:Database reports for Vietnamese Wikipedia (I mean only the list of pages you supporting as listed at en:User:Community Tech bot. This tool will help us very much in community advocate and more. Thank you in advanced! --minhhuy ^(talk) 08:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello! This is the right place for your request. I can definitely set up the database reports for Vietnamese wikipedia. Note that not all of the reports there would work out of the box on Vietnamese, for example PRODed articles one. Rest of them should work but I'll have to look at the code to verify. The bot will need operating permissions on the wiki. Also, you need to tell me a few things-

• What's the master page going to be titled? Like on English it is "Wikipedia:Database reports".
• What are the respective titles for each of the reports going to be? (So I can put the reports on that page under the master page)
• Translations for the report descriptions

I'll let you know if I think of anything else. Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much, about the preparation for bot tasks, I will explain here:

• vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu (as for Wikipedia:Database reports) is the master page.
• We gonna have 4 reports for now (temporary), those are:

Vietnamese page	English title alternative	Translation of elements
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Bài viết theo kích cỡ	Articles by size	* For description: Các bài viết theo tổng kích cỡ, chủ yếu trong không gian tên chính. For table headers: Namespace = Không gian tên Article = Bài viết Taille = Độ dài
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Bài viết được sửa nhiều lần nhất trong tháng vừa qua	Most edited articles last month	* For description: Các bài viết theo số lần sửa đổi trong 30 ngày vừa qua, giới hạn trong 25 bài được sửa nhiều nhất. For table headers: Title = Tên bài Revisions = Số phiên bản
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Thành viên tích cực có lịch sử đóng góp lâu đời nhất (per 50-earliest created, not 200 as English Wikipedia as the situation of Vietnamese Wikipedia)	Active editors with the longest-established accounts	* For description: 50 tài khoản người dùng được mở sớm nhất tích cực sửa đổi trong 30 ngày vừa qua. For table headers: Username = Tên người dùng Date created = Ngày mở tài khoản Approx. edit count = Số sửa đổi xấp xỉ
vi:Wikipedia:Báo cáo cơ sở dữ liệu/Số trang theo không gian tên	Page count by namespace	* For description: Số trang theo từng không gian tên. For table headers: Namespace ID = ID không gian tên Namespace = Không gian tên Total pages = Tổng số trang Pages with redirects = Trang đổi hướng Pages without redirects = Trang không đổi hướng For the name of each namespaces, I think it already on the Vietnamese database?

• About the bot permission, Vietnamese Wikipedia don't have a standard bot policy, and because the Community Tech bot will run frequency only for these database reports, it unnecessary for a bot flag. But in the case you still need a flag, you could ask request at vi:Wikipedia:Robot/Yêu cầu cấp quyền (the page is actually low-traffic since our bureaucrat only 2 people, all busy :^))

If you need anything more please let me know. Thank you very much again! --minhhuy ^(talk) 04:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for all the information! I will work on this soon. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello minhhuy, I've made the community tech bot to add the database report on the pages you've mentioned. The reports on these pages will be updated on a weekly basis. Let us know if you have any questions! Also, in this process, I made the bot to create this page by mistake and I don't have the rights to request its deletion. It would be great if you could help delete it. Thanks! SSethi (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

The bot has stopped

Hello Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot appears to have stopped; there's been no new reports for about four hours, and the iThenticate links are failing to load. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Diannaa. I'm looking into it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

It seems like iThenticate is experiencing some issues. We should just wait for it to recover. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

user:virajmishra

Hello niharika ji mai shahdol madhya pradesh se hu mera khata global lock hai kya karu mai ab to mera khata global unlock ho. 2405:204:E709:BEDE:1F1A:913E:CAD5:2C9C 16:41, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

5 remarks

Hello,
I have 5 remarks:

• I thank you very much. With Phabricator, I have seen that you have done a lot of work as a consequence of my wish . This is great.

Thanks for writing up that wish! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, some logs are still under discussion. Do you know when they will be discussed?

You can comment on the ticket if there are log types you think should be thank-able but aren't currently. At the moment, the process is that we consult the Anti-Harassment and/or the Support & Safety teams on what should and should not be thankable. If there's a log type you want us to make thank-able, please comment on the ticket and we can discuss. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, I have read all the details, but I do not understand the hesitations about the block + gblblock logs. What do you think about my remarks in Talk:Community Tech/Thanks notification for log entries#Why exclude the Block log?

I believe the reason we did not include block log entries as thankable was that they can encourage negative behavior and potentially lead to trolling. I read your remarks in the thread you link to. Would you like to state your case in the ticket again so other people who have expressed concerns about this can reply and we can have a discussion about it there? Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, where is the log associated to the edit of a topic summary of a structured discussion? In this example I have noticed that I was unable to thank for this action.

Currently only resolving and unresolving a Structured Discussion topic is possible. I'd be happy to look into thanking for edits to topic summary. It's on my to-do list. I'll get back to you on this. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• In Phab:T60485, I have seen the log type "close" for "flow-close-topic & flow-restore-topic" and the log type "lock" for "Structured discussions topic resolve/unresolve log". I have looked at Phab:T191482 and at this example in the public logs. I see the 'thank link' in this example, but I think that the community does not know about this possibility. Nobody has planified to add this 'thank link' in the corresponding topic's history? Moreover, the line "22:39, 4 April 2018..." can be found in the example in the public logs, but I have not found the exact corresponding log. For instance, I have not found this line in the threaded discussion log. It seems that the menu "All the public logs" does not really show all the public logs?

The log you are looking at is the threaded discussion log which is different from Structured Discussions (flow) logs. Threaded discussion refers to LiquidThreads which are no longer in use. It seems like there is no dedicated log stream for structured discussion logs and hence is only appears in "All public logs" only. You are right that the thank link only appears in the logs and not in the history because we did not want to flood the history pages with thank links and we felt that having the link in the logs would suffice for the purpose of this wish. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Regards --NicoScribe (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching out NicoScribe. I was on vacation for a couple of weeks. I'll get back to you with a reply soon. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@NicoScribe: I replied inline. Sorry about the delay on this. Have a nice day! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much. No problem for the delay.

I have transferred my remarks about the thanks into Phab:T60485 and Phab:T191482. But I have little experience in Phabricator: I hope that I have made no mistake. For instance: I have mentioned a comment from MGChecker, so I suppose that MGChecker will receive a notification?

The fact that the menu "All the public logs" shows all the actions but does not list all the public logs is another problem. Is it a known problem? Is there a Phabricator task about it? --NicoScribe (talk) 09:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

You have done it correctly. MGChecker will receive a notification, yes. For your question about "All public logs" not really showing all logs - I don't know why it's the case. I looked for tickets and found task T157218 but that doesn't seem to address the fact that structured discussion logs don't show up in all logs even though they are public. I think it has something to do with how structured discussions works. I'll ask my colleagues about it and file a ticket if there isn't one. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

CopyPatrol: 502 Bad Gateway

Hi NKohli. I'm getting a 502 bad gateway error when I try to open https://tools.wmflabs.org/copypatrol/en. This has been going on for around two hours. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks! Diannaa (talk) 20:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Diannaa:. I am able to access CopyPatrol fine. I am getting some error reports about CopyPatrol going down every now and then for a few minutes. The most likely cause is that ToolForge is doing some reboots on the backend which will last another few hours. Sorry about the inconvenience caused. Thanks for letting me know. I'm keeping an eye on it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I have been able to access the page again as of about half an hour ago, but it has yet to post any new reports since 2018-06-06 18:18. I had an old version saved in an open tab so was able to clear some old reports in the meantime. Earwig's tool was down for a while too earlier today. Diannaa (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

My suspicion is that it was down due to the ToolForge reboots as well. I see new reports coming in now on CopyPatrol. We might have missed some due to the issues though, unfortunately. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry but that's incorrect. There's been no new reports since 2018-06-06 18:18 (6 hours ago). Diannaa (talk) 00:38, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry. You are absolutely right. There aren't new records in the interface. The good news is that I do see new records in the database but they are not showing up for some reason. I am investigating this. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi again, Diannaa. The problem has now been fixed but I was wrong about the records being saved in the database. New records are now being generated. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 21:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 1

Newsletter • July 2018

Welcome to the first issue of the Timeless newsletter! This issue is being sent or forwarded to everyone who has at some point expressed an interest in the project, give or take, as well as a couple of other potentially relevant pages, so if you would like to continue (or start) receiving this newsletter directly, please sign up for further updates on the meta page.

The news:

The Timeless grant has been selected for funding, and the project is now underway!

While I've had a somewhat slow start working on the project for health reasons, I'm pleased to announce that everything described in the proposal is now either happening, or on its way to happening.

Current progress:

• The project now has a hub on Meta to serve as a directory for the various related pages, workboards, and local discussions and help pages. It's probably incomplete, especially with regards to specific language projects that might have local pages for Timeless, so if you know of others, please add them!
• Outreach: I've been talking to various people and groups directly about skinning, desktop/mobile interfaces, project management, specific component support, and other things, and have begun to compile a very shoddy list of skinning problems and random issues on mw.org based on this. Some of this may inform the direction of this project, or possibly this project will result in building a more proper list that can then be used for other things. We shall see.
• Some development - task triage, code review, bug fixing, and various rabbit holes involving ...overflows.

General plan for the future:

• Triage the rest of the workboard.
• Catch up with all the talkpages and other bug reports that have been left various other places that are not the project workboard
• Do all the bug fixes/features/other things!
• Some proposals aimed at Commons and Wikisource in particular (maybe, we'll see)

Essentially, the grant as written shall be carried out. This was the plan, and remains the plan. Timelines remain fuzzy, but while there have been some initial delays, I don't particularly expect the timeline for project as a whole to change a whole lot.

Also, for anyone at Wikimania right now: I am also at Wikimania. Come talk to me in person!

Thank you all for your interest and support thus far!

-— Isarra ༆ 12:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

This issue has been sent regardless of signup status. To receive future issues please add yourself on the massmessage list.

Latest message for Collaboration team newsletter; Growth team's newsletter invite

Hello

Sorry to use English if that's not your favorite language.

You are receiving this message because you were reading the Collaboration team newsletter.

The Collaboration team doesn't longer exists. That team was working on building features that encourage collaboration. This is the latest message for that newsletter.

The Growth Team, formed in July 2018, supports some former Collaboration projects. The Growth Team's main objective is to ease new editors' first steps on wikis, through software changes. You can discover all objectives and missions of the Growth team on its page.

If you wish to be informed about Growth team's updates about easing new users first steps, you can subscribe to the new list to get updates. The first message from Growth –with a call for feedback on a new project– will be posted in a few days!

If you have questions or you want to share experiences made on your wiki about new users' first steps, please post them on the team talk page, in any language.

On behalf of the Growth team, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #1

Welcome to the first newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.

8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!

We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.

We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.

Share your experiences with newcomers

We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.

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

Problems with Copypatrol

Hi Niharika. I am experiencing issues with CopyPatrol. I can't get the iThenticate reports to load. Also, there was a large gap with no new reports generated from 02:01 to 07:33, which was in the evening in North America when there is typically a lot of editing happening. Sometimes the report loads, but extremely slowly. I can't tell if the problem is at their end or or at our end. Diannaa (talk) 11:07, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Adding: We've had no new reports added for 4.5 hours, so the bot appears to have stopped. Diannaa (talk) 13:09, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for alerting me. It seems like the bot is working now. I am able to see the ithenticate reports. Does the issue still persist for you? From your description, it seems like the issue was on iThenticate's end. The don't seem to have a way for us to know when their service is down (they used to have something) so it's hard to know for sure. Do let me know if this happens again. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Normal activity appears to have resumed. Reports are being posted at CopyPatrol, and iThenticate report are loading, perhaps a little slower than normal. I agree it was probably an issue on their end this time. Thanks for having a look. Diannaa (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

The bot appears to have stopped again. No new reports for three hours. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 03:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Eran re-started the bot at around 03:16, 29 August 2018 and there's been only one new report since then. I was wondering if you should contact iThenticate and see if there's an issue at their end? Or is the problem at our end? Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 12:34, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I checked in on the tool and it seems like ToolForge (the platform on which CopyPatrol runs) was down for maintenance for a few hours. I see new reports coming in now so hopefully the problem is now fixed. Sorry about the inconvenience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

CopyPatrol should not be indexed

Hi Niharika. I was surprised to find the CopyPatrol pages are not NOINDEXed. Google searching usernames such as "Natstaropoli" and "RMGroup17" revealed this fact. I would appreciate it if this page did not appear in Google search results, as it could become a target for vandalism. Any assistance you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa. Sorry for the late reply. I'll look into this request. Thanks for reaching out. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: the awesome MusikAnimal went ahead and did this super fast. I hope the problem is fixed/will be fixed pretty soon once the config is picked up by the crawler(s). -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

It seems to be working. Thank you, and thanks to MusikAnimal as well. Diannaa (talk) 17:40, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Note

You have new messages

Hello, NKohli (WMF). You have new messages at Talk:CopyPatrol.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

CopyPatrol has stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 02:28 UTC October 1), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. I wonder if the iThenticate website is down, or if there's something happening at our end that we can fix. Thanks for any assistance you can offer. Diannaa (talk) 13:00, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm looking into it. Thanks for reporting. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Eran reports that there's something wrong with our iThenticate account and we need to get it re-enabled. Diannaa (talk) 19:23, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I realised. I hope we can get it back up soon. I'll keep an eye on updates. Thanks again. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Eran has now re-started the bot and normal activity has resumed at CopyPatrol. Thank you, Diannaa (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Niharika. The bot appears to have stopped again. There's been no new reports for nearly 7 hours. Thanks for any assistance. Diannaa (talk) 03:43, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I see no recent requests have been made to Turnitin. Eran do you have any idea about this? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:45, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I think it run the bot without timeout flag earlier this week. I restarted it, should be working now. eranroz (talk) 06:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #2

Welcome to the second newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Our plan for the next quarter is ready

After consulting with many communities on the best ways to increase retention, we will focus during the next 3 months on these projects:

• Understanding first day: to see what new editors do right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
• Personalized first day: this idea will also help us learn a lot about new editors by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process. We hope to share initial results in December.
• Focus on help desk: we plan to invite or redirect people to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.

You can read about the details of this plan on our team page.

How did we get to this plan?

We have set up our plan based on the 8 ideas we were considering. You can read about our analysis in our team updates, and detailed discussion on each idea.

We are looking for volunteers

Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Grant Metrics tool

Hi Niharika, I am writing this message to know about Grant Metrics tool. I would like to know whether the tool has been fully developed, its readiness for usage and whether it has been officially launched for use. Thanks, KCVelaga (talk) 09:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@KCVelaga: Hello! Grant Metrics tool is under active development at the moment. We are going to be adding more features to the tool over the next couple months. You should be able to use the tool in its current state though. It has the ability to generate some standard statistics for a given set of participants on a given wiki during a given time period. We recently added ability to filter the edits by category too. The tool has been officially given the go ahead for being used by the communities. We have several Wikimedia chapters and event organizers using the tool currently.

The tool is on track to being renamed to Event Metrics in the near term. We'll be including some ways to download detailed reports about the edits that took place during the event. We will also be adding some more metrics in future. I hope this helps. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have more questions or run into problems with the tool. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): Thanks for quick and detailed response. I've got a chance to use and test the tool yesterday. It looks quite good. But I would like to know more about the difference between the existing "Programs and Events Dashboard" and this tool. They almost generate the same metrics. If you're planning to add more features to it (especially which the community wants), it'll be even more awesome. I suggest doing a survey with the WMF grantees and check what they're in need of. If you've done this already, that is great. Thanks, KCVelaga (talk) 15:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@KCVelaga: Grant Metrics is meant to be simpler to use with a focus on events that community organizers run. The Dashboard has a bigger focus on classroom workflows whereas Grant Metrics is built with the sole purpose of getting metrics which event organizers are interested in. It's also officially supported by Wikimedia Foundation while the Dashboard is supported by WikiEd Foundation. This project is now being run by JMatazzoni (WMF) actually. He's already done a fair bit of consultation with the community on this page. Your thoughts on what metrics would be useful for events you organize (or other use cases) would be very welcome on that page. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:54, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): Thanks for clarifying, and directing me to the link. It is quite helpful to understand more about this tool. KCVelaga (talk) 15:36, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Problem with CopyPatrol

Hi Niharika. I am having a problem with CopyPatrol: I am getting an error message when I scroll down to the bottom of the page and try to load additional items. The message reads "An unknown error occurred when loading results. Please try again." Diannaa (talk) 22:23, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for flagging this. We made some fixes to the tool which caused this. We will fix this as soon as possible. I will keep you informed. Thanks for letting me know. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Diannaa (talk) 00:15, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

This has been fixed since. Let me know if it happens again. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #3

Welcome to the third newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Two Growth team projects to be deployed in next two weeks

We will be deploying the "Understanding first day" and "Personalized first day" projects on Czech and Korean Wikipedias in the coming weeks. See the new project pages below for full details on the projects, and our project updates page for their progress.

• Understanding first day: learn about the actions new editors take right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
• Personalized first day: learn about new editors' objectives by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process, and personalizing their onboarding. We hope to share initial results in December.

Third Growth team project begins

• Focus on help desk: direct newcomers to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.

Best practices for helping newcomers

We are going to direct newcomers to help desks. But what's the best way to reply to a newcomer there? We have gathered some best practices for successful interactions, based on community experiences and some external documentation. The page has also been reviewed by some experienced community members who suggested some changes. That page is now open for translations. Comments and suggestions are still welcome!

We are still looking for volunteers

Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.

Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

wishlist

sorry, I missed the deadline of the discussion phase of the wishlist survey to change the name of the stereoskopie proposal. Can I still change the name? (and how? just do a move of the proposal page, or is there more to think of?) --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 05:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@°: That's okay. We can still rename it. I can rename it on your behalf. Do you know what you will rename it to? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

How about "Present 3D content in a stereoscopic view"? --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 20:55, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Done! Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I only now noticed that the 360degree proposal has been entered again in this year. I had hoped to merge my propoal with the 360-proposal last year, but got no reply from the proposer. This year this proposal comes with a 3D/360 example picture (that seems new to me). Now it does make even less sense not to merge the proposals. As I am sceptic, that contacting the proposer by me will have any more effect than last year, is there anything you can still do about it? It would be bad, if the proposals cancel each other out in the voting, as the problems and solutions are very similar. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 18:52, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@°: I agree it makes sense to merge the proposals. Would you rather merge your proposal into 360 photo viewing one or the other way around? I can talk to them and help merge it. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I tried to conntact the other proposer in the past, maybe you have more luck. As the voting will start soon, I think it best to merge it to "present 3D and panoramic content in adequate ways like viewing in stereoscopic view". I trust you to make the needed changes to the text, you know I am not after a specific implementation, but a good solution for displaying 3D, 180degree, 360degree media. I drafted my proposal in autumn 2016, by now the MW software has been devoloped in various ways, so it is up to the wishlist team to adapt both proposals to the state of the software. --𝔊 (Gradzeichen Diſk✉Talk) 10:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

° I think calling it present 3D and panoramic content in adequate ways like viewing in stereoscopic view is a mouthful. People are less likely to understand and click on it. Support 360 photo viewing is shorter and more easily understood. @Ahm masum, TheDJ, and MichaelSchoenitzer: - what do you think about merging 360 photo viewing and Present 3D content in a stereoscopic view proposals? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

@NKohli (WMF): ; I think "Suppot 3D & 360° photo viewing" would be appropriate .In this way these proposals CAN'T cancel each other in the voting phase. but the "Proposed solution" section must have to contain the both "solution's" .

1. from my perspective @Gradzeichen's "Proposed solution" will be too much for wiki tech team to Fully Implement.
2. the work for 360° is already 50% done , but the support for 3D/VR content didn't even start yet.
3. @Gradzeichen's want jps , sbs and ttb file format support . even though i also want these badly ; but please face the reality.we won't see this kind of implementation until 2020-2021....

what do you say @TheDJ: , @AKlapper (WMF):......TRHANKS EVERYONE --- Ahm masum (talk) 19:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Development of Blame Tool

is complete? Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 07:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: My apologies. That's incorrect. We're yet to begin work on that project. Thanks for pointing it out! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:17, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #4

Welcome to the fourth newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

We need your feedback!

We have two requests for community members:

1. Now that data is coming in for the welcome survey, we are planning how to use that data to personalize the newcomer's first day. See our current thoughts here, and join the conversation here.
2. Try out the help panel's interactive prototype, and read about how we're planning to roll it out, and post any thoughts or reactions here.

Two Growth team projects have been deployed (detailed updates here)

• Personalized first day (welcome survey) was deployed on November 20 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
  • The survey is now being shown to half of new users (A/B test). Responses are being recorded in the database. We'll report on initial results during December.
  • We are planning to test a second version of the survey, called "Variation C", which we think will maximize the number of users who complete the survey and stay on the wiki.
  • The original objective of this project was to give newcomers the materials they need to achieve their goals, and so now we are currently planning how we will use the information collected in the welcome survey to personalize the newcomer's experience. We hope community members will read our current thinking and join the conversation here. Some of the plans we are considering include:
    • Making it easy for newcomers to see editing activity around the topic areas in which they indicated that they're interested.
    • Connecting interested newcomers to experienced editors.
    • Surfacing the help content most relevant to the reason for which the newcomers created their accounts.

• Understanding first day (EditorJourney) was deployed on November 15 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias. It has been done after a longer security review and final testing than expected. Data is now being recorded for all new users on those wikis, and we've been auditing the data and preparing to make initial reports during December. Stay tuned for the next newsletter!

Help panel is under construction

• Focus on help desk (help panel) is planned to be deployed during the week of January 7 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
• This interactive prototype is the best way to see the design and wording in the feature.
• We ran live user tests on the prototype, with results posted here.
• In addition to giving the ability to ask a question, the help panel will also contain a set of links to existing help content. Our ambassadors on Czech and Korean Wikipedias are determining the right initial set of most helpful links in this task.
• We encourage community members to try out the prototype and read about the rules for who will get the feature, and add any thoughts to this discussion.

We are still looking for volunteers

Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.

Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project updates page for detailed updates on the projects we work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 09:31, 7 December 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Copypatrol bot has stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 2019-01-05 15:47), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. The iThenticate website was down for maintenance for a while, but it's back up now. Perhaps there's something happening at our end that we can fix? Thanks for any assistance you can offer. I have also posted at Eran's talk page. Diannaa (talk) 21:07, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Normal activity has resumed. Thank you :) Diannaa (talk) 01:34, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

CopyPatrol stopped

Hi Niharika. The CopyPatrol bot is not filing new reports (there's been no new reports filed since 14:37 UTC July 13), and the iThenticate reports are failing to load. I wonder if the iThenticate website is down, or if there's something happening at our end that we can fix. Thanks for any assistance you can offer. This is the same as the issue I reported in October 2018. I will also post on Eran's talk at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 17:08, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Update: Normal activity has resumed. I'll let you know if it doesn't last! Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 20:14, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi again Niharika. The bot has stopped again; no new reports since 13:25 on July 21 (8 hours ago). Cross posting to Eran's talk at en.wiki. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 21:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

The bot is still down. Is there anybody that can take a look? user:MusikAnimal sometimes helps. Thanks, Diannaa (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2019 (UTC) user:MusikAnimal (WMF) Diannaa (talk) 19:26, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for the ping. I'm alerting the team about it. We'll look into it asap. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Diannaa (talk) 20:08, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Doc James, Eranroz It looks like we ran out of the quota again. Can someone please ping Turnitin to update the credits again? The tool won't function until that happens. :( -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

User:Diannaa and User:NKohli (WMF) Okay thanks for the heads up. Will email them right now. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Normal activity has resumed. Thanks Dr H. Diannaa (talk) 18:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Coronation - COVID-19

Hi NKohli (WMF) I am trying to find out who inserted a wikilink to Coronation into the User talk:Headbomb page. I saw this link listed at the top of What links here of that page, and was curious why when and who inserted it.

I am asking you because on 21 February 2019 you posted a message on my talkpage asking me to comment on an "an early-stage mockup" of the wmf-version of enwiki's wikiblame. I therefore assume you know about how to use this tool? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 17:06, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: The tool you mention has been built (see the documentation page on mediawiki). Unfortunately it doesn't work for talk pages. The way it works is by storing a page model in the database for every change made to the page and it will need a lot more storage capacity than is available in order to enable it to work on all namespaces. You can ask about it in more detail on the project talk page.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Feel free to reach out if I can help with anything else. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

phab:T189717

Hi Niharika! I was engaged in an off-wiki discussion about the English Wikipedia's blocks of T-Mobile ranges, and mentioned that blocked users are shown this very helpful template to help them create an account to contribute. I was directed to this screenshot, showing the complete block message that affected users see: none of the wikimarkup is treated as wikimarkup, and is less than useless. Potential editors affected, who probably do not know wikimarkup, how the template namespace works, or how to go to the request an account page, are basically unable to get help and edit. The ticket linked as the header for this section was created over two years ago, and I couldn't possibly estimate the amount of potential editors turned away by this bug in that time. I understand that it seems unclear as to what team should handle this, but in my view it is more important to simply work on it with haste regardless as it's alienating a very large group of potential contributors from editing, especially considering the relatively recent merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, meaning that another 54 million people (Sprint's pre-merge customer base) are now (or will soon be) using T-Mobile's negligent and backwards way of assigning IPs, thus affected by the blocks. Thank you, Vermont (talk) 23:56, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

IP Masking

Hi NKohli, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to offer myself as a resource for the IP masking changes, especially with respect to the IP info feature. While I'm not a checkuser, I have a fair amount of experience dealing with IPs, both as an enwiki administrator and proxy checker. To be honest, I'm not happy with IP masking, but it's been made clear that some form of it will be coming, like it or not; I want to do my part in helping make sure that whatever the end product is, it's something our volunteers can use. If there are any questions I can answer, tools I can test-drive, anything like that, please let me know - I would be happy to help. Best, GeneralNotability (talk) 01:13, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability Thank you so much. I am really glad to see this. IP masking is a difficult project and we need support from experienced people like yourself for it to happen as smoothly as possible.

I will reach out to you when we do the next round of testing on the tool. In the meantime, if you could keep an eye on the project page, that would be helpful. Your comments on the project talk page have been helpful already. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

IP banning

Hi. I mentioned ACTRIAL and you reminded me that you were part of the team. Do you think there is any chance, just in case we need it, of DannyH (WMF) and Nettrom already drawing up a list of hypotheses for testing on en.Wiki? Based on a pretest sample of six months before a trial, and then a six mnonth trial? Kudpung (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Kudpung. My apologies for the late response -- I missed your note.

I think you are talking about the IP editing ban, please correct me if I am wrong. Can you give me a little more detail about what kind of hypotheses are you thinking of, for enwiki? Danny and Nettrom are both in different teams now but we can definitely consult them about this project and get some of their insights. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Niharika. I am indeed talking about the IP editing ban, especially where the Farsi Wikipedia is also now following up the Portuguese success with a trial. I believe that interest will continue to grow among the encyclopedia projects. The English Wikipedia is unique because it is not country based. It is the only fully cross-cultural Wikipedia spanning huge social differences such as from India where English is the official second language, to the US. These social dichotomies need to be taken into account when making any radical changes to what many perceive as 'founding principles'.

These principles are however idealistic rather than pragmatic, and the resounding success of ACTRIAL proved yet again that the requirements of the volunteers who do the work are more founded on empirical experience than anecdotal evidence. For ACTRIAL which I pioneered and shepherded for many years until it finally became reality, Nettrom came up with an excellent catalogue of hypotheses to be proven or disproven by a trial. It worked extremely well and I think that those same hypotheses could be adopted and adapted for an eventual IP Ban Trial for the en.Wiki.

I'm not saying that there is a need yet to propose an IP Ban for debate at the en.Wiki community but with IP Cloaking in the horizon, the community is certainky going to debate the possibility sooner or later and it would be good to be prepared. I would be happy to work with you and Nettrom to draw up a set of hypotheseses. This might even interest GeneralNotability and DarwIn. Kudpung (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung I like the idea of drawing up the hypotheses. We are currently gauging the impact of the ban on Farsi Wikipedia. We will hopefully be able to draw some useful inferences from that study but like you said, English is unlike most other projects in its very-global and distributed nature. I would be extremely cautious before proposing such a trial on English because there will undoubtedly be effects that we haven't considered. I think having a list of potential hypotheses drawn up will ease some of those concerns.

Would you like to kickstart such a list? We can brainstorm on it together going forward and bring in Nettrom and other folks for their expert advice. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure, I can kickstart it. It won't be a high priority though because the en.Wiki community will want to wait for more feedback from pt.Wiki and Farsi before even considering a debate about it. I'll let you know when I have something. Kudpung (talk) 00:40, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19

Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article

• "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
• "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors

• The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [1]
• At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [2]

Community configuration

• Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling

• We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [3]
• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [4][5]
• A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
• Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.

News for communities

• Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
• The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
• Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
• Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.

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

18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #20

Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Suggested edits

As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.

Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.

Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.

"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.

Positive reinforcement

Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:

• Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
• Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
• Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!

News for mentors

• The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
• The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
• We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
• Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
• We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.

Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!

Scaling

Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.

How to help

Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.

Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.

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

17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #21

Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!

New project: Positive reinforcement

Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.

• The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
• We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
• We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
• The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
• Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.

For mentors

• We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
  • In the Mentor module, we now provide more information about the public nature of the mentors/newcomer relationship and the fact that talk pages are public.
  • We now allow newcomers to opt-in and opt-out of mentorship.

Scaling

• "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
• "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [6]

Suggested edits

• Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
• Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
  • Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
  • User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
  • Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
  • Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [7]
• Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.

Community configuration

Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.

• Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [8]
• Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [9]

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13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #22

Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available

As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.

• About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
• Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.

If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.

Ongoing projects and explorations

The new impact module is part of the Positive Reinforcement project. The image displays the mockup for mobile we used for user testing.

We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.

Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).

Experiments analysis

Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:

• Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
• They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
• The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).

Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.

• Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
• Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.

News for mentors

A new system for the mentors list

The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.

The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [10][11]

Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.

Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.

A tip for mentors

Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.

And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.

Other improvements

Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:

• While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [12]
• Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [13]
• Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [14]

Recent changes and fixed bugs

• We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [15]
• Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [16]
• Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [17]
• In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [18]

Have a question? A suggestion?

Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.

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17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

A request

Hi Niharika,

We have posted an open letter to the Foundation and Board of Trustees. It concerns the development of MediaWiki extensions and needs the personal attention of all concerned developers and managers. Please see it at:

Open_letter_from_English_Wikipedia_New_Page_Reviewers

and

en:Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination/2022_WMF_letter

Your comments are welcome. Many thanks.

Kind regards,

On behalf of the English Wikipedia Community

Kudpung (talk) 09:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

en.Wiki Landing Page

Hi Niharika. I notice you don't respond on your talk pages, so I'll also be contacting you by email. All I really want to know is where is the community consensus for the roll out of this page? It would help the team I'm working with to integrate it in a larger plan to present to the Growth team which they will like very much. Thanks. Kudpung (talk) 05:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #23

Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!

Highlights

• Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
• Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.

Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.

Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test

The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.

Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.

This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.

Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback

After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:

• Patroller fatigue:
  • By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.

• Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
  • Add a Link
    • Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
    • The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
    • The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
  • Add an Image
    • Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
    • Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
    • We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [19]

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.

Recent changes

• All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [20]
• The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [21][22]
• Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors

• All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
  • We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
  • Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
  • Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
  • A new special page — Special:ManageMentors — now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
• The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [23]

Deployments

• Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [24]

Improving this newsletter

We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

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20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #24

Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!

Newcomer experience projects

The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:

• Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
• Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
• "Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
• Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.

Newcomer tasks

• Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [25]
• The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [26]

Mentorship

• When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [27]
• Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [28]
• Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
  • Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
  • If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news

• In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [29]
• This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.

Translations

• Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
• Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.

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

14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

We need your feedback on a tool from the Wikimedia Summit

Reminder: the guide to using Baserow, presented during the Wikimedia Summit.

Hi! I'm contacting you as one of the participants in the Wikimedia Summit 2022, to kindly ask for your feedback through a 5-10 minute survey to evaluate 'Baserow' (note: the survey is on a Google form).

Baserow was a tool through which participants in the Summit co-created a database of Movement Strategy activities. We hope to learn from you how useful it may be to keep using it in the future to help document and connect on Movement Strategy work.

You are welcome and encouraged to fill out the survey in any language. Your feedback would be very appreciated --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC).

Growth team newsletter #25

Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Celebrations

Leveling up release

• We released Leveling up features to our pilot wikis on March 22 for an initial A/B test.
• In this test, we use post-edit dialogs (pop-ups shown after publishing an edit) and notifications to encourage new editors to try new types of newcomer-friendly suggested edits.
• We are closely monitoring the short term impact of this feature as well as the longer term effect on newcomer productivity and retention. If the experiment shows positive results, we will release this feature to more wikis.

5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February

• In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
• Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.

Recent changes

• Add a link
  • Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [30][31]
  • We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
• The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [32]
• Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
• Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work

• Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
  • We are starting design work. [33]
  • Growth team Ambassadors helped with an initial evaluation of these section-level image suggestions. [34]
  • We will start a community consultation in which we share initial ideas and designs soon. [35]
• IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – We will support this project for all Growth Team maintained products and extensions that may be affected by IP Masking. [36]

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

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #26

Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

One million Suggested Edits

We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!

• The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
• Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
• Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
• Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)

Positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.

• The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [37]
• The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
• The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image

• We are creating a new section-level variation of the “add an image” task. We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway. [38]

Other updates

• We are progressively releasing Add a link to more wikis. [39]
• After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated Thanks usage on the wikis. There is no evidence that thanks increased after the feature was added on more pages.
• We helped with code review for the 2023 Community Wish to add Notifications for user page edits. [40]
• We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our Growth’s Community events report.

What's next for Growth?

• We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!

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15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #27

Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Annual plan for Growth

We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.

Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:

• Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
• Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.

Suggested edits

The new "Add an image" section-level task

We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.

Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [41]

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.

Mentorship

The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.

More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [42]

The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.

Positive reinforcement

We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.

In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.

Growth contributes to IP Editing migration

The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:

• the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
• change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [43]

Community Configuration 2.0

We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:

• We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [44]
• We have started to investigate design improvements. [45]
• We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [46]

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12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

IP masking talk at Wikimania

Thanks for your great presentation at Wikimania about IP masking! There are a few questions on Etherpad for your attention[47]. Let me know if you have an answer for Q6-8. There was a lively debate in Mandarin at yesterday's reception! Deryck C. (talk) 02:33, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for adding those questions to the ether-as @Deryck Chan! I will respond to the questions in there soon and let you know when I do. It was lovely meeting you and the rest of the crew yesterday. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 02:49, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Deryck Chan I have now responded to all the questions in there. Ping me if you want me to clarify something! Thanks again. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Deryck Chan, I'm hoping that zh-yue.wiki will consider being an early adopter. Please keep us in mind. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Which information page should I share with my yue.wp colleagues to get the discussion started? I'm thinking of one Meta or MW page summarising the feature changes that will be rolled out to early adopters. Deryck C. (talk) 21:20, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that mw:Help:Temporary accounts is the simplest page. I have just posted a longer IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/FAQ, and that might be the second page to read. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #28

Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community Configuration, concept A: Accordion style

Community Configuration, concept B: Dashboard style

Community configuration 2.0

• Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
• Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
• Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.

IP Masking

• The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
• Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)

Mentorship

• We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
• We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
• Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.

Scaling Growth features

• We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
• We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
• At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.

Other news

• We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
• You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
• After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.

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Trizek_(WMF) Discussion 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Issues with Eventmetric

Hi!

I'm getting issues with the Eventmetric tool. I've posted some message on the event talk page, but still no answer. Could you have time to check and guide me if possible? BamLifa (talk) 15:33, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #29

Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community Conversations

The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.

This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.

Impact Module

At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [48]

Add a Link

We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [49] [50]

We have a few Wikipedias remaining:

• German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
• There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.

Community Configuration

• We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [51] 🖂
• Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
• A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
• Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.

Mentorship

When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [52]

We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [53]

We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [54]

It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [55]

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

18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Growth News, April 2024

The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. 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.

Community Configuration

Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.

An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.

In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.

Experiment Results

Add a Image experiment analysis results

The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:

• The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
• The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
• The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
• A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).

Personalized praise experiment results

This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)

English donors encouraged to try editing

As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)

Future work

Annual Plan

The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

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

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 submission

Dear Niharika,

On behalf of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 programme committee, I am pleased to inform you that your submission titled "Temporary accounts" has been accepted as a demonstration. In case you have any additional requests or questions, do not hesitate to contact me or any other committee member.

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 20:26, 22 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)

Growth News, October 2024

Current work

Newcomer 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.

One design concept aimed to increase constructive activation

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.

Community Configuration

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

As 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

• 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

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.

Trizek_(WMF), 15:44, 22 October 2024 (UTC)