Mission 1 | Mission 2 | Mission 3 | Mission 4 | Mission 5 | Mission 6 | Mission 7 |
Say Hello to the World | An Invitation to Earth | Small Changes, Big Impact | The Neutral Point of View | The Veil of Verifiability | The Civility Code | Looking Good Together |
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.
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:
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.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.
Third Growth team project begins
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, 13:29, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
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:
Two Growth team projects have been deployed (detailed updates here)
Help panel is under construction
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.
Welcome to the fifth 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 began the " Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".
We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.
The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:
We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:
We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.
During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.
Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.
We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the seventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.
Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:
The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.
Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.
---
Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “ spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.
Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.
In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:
Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.
Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.
Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!
More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.
Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.
If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.
On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the ninth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.
Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.
The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".
Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.
In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.
Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called " structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.
In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.
Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.
We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.
In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.
We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.
Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!
Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.
As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the fourteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We deployed the "Guidance" feature on June 15.
This feature uses the help panel to explain what to do after selecting a suggested edit. For instance, if a newcomer selects a copyedit task, they are guided on what sorts of errors to look for. They can see examples of how to rewrite the text. You can try this feature on test.wikipedia.org. First enable the homepage and the help panel in your preferences there.
Since we launched "Guidance", the data we collected show good results (see image). Now, we see more users completing suggested edits than before Guidance was deployed.
Structured tasks is a project that aims to break down editing workflows into a series of steps. We hope newcomers can accomplish these tasks easily.
In the previous newsletter, we asked for feedback from community members on the idea. We had a good discussion in six languages with 35 community members ( summary here). We have now posted new design mockups. We hope community members can check the mockups out and react to them (in any language). They are posted along with some of the main questions we are thinking about as we continue to refine our plans.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.
As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.
Learn more about the findings.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Newcomer task experiments results
The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.
In November 2019, the Growth team added the " newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.
This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:
We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.
Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.
You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page
General metrics
As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:
Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.
A separate list for workshops hosts
During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.
Claiming multiple mentees at once
Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.
The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714
Growth team's newsletter prepared by
the Growth team and posted by
bot •
Give feedback •
Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to
use a magic word, {{#mentor}}
, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
" Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
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.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Mission 1 | Mission 2 | Mission 3 | Mission 4 | Mission 5 | Mission 6 | Mission 7 |
Say Hello to the World | An Invitation to Earth | Small Changes, Big Impact | The Neutral Point of View | The Veil of Verifiability | The Civility Code | Looking Good Together |
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.
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:
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.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.
Third Growth team project begins
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, 13:29, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
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:
Two Growth team projects have been deployed (detailed updates here)
Help panel is under construction
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.
Welcome to the fifth 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 began the " Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".
We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.
The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:
We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:
We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.
During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.
Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.
We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the seventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.
Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:
The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.
Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.
---
Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “ spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.
Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.
In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:
Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.
Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.
Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!
More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.
Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.
If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.
On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the ninth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.
Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.
The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".
Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.
In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.
Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called " structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.
In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.
Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.
We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.
In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.
We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.
Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!
Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.
As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the fourteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We deployed the "Guidance" feature on June 15.
This feature uses the help panel to explain what to do after selecting a suggested edit. For instance, if a newcomer selects a copyedit task, they are guided on what sorts of errors to look for. They can see examples of how to rewrite the text. You can try this feature on test.wikipedia.org. First enable the homepage and the help panel in your preferences there.
Since we launched "Guidance", the data we collected show good results (see image). Now, we see more users completing suggested edits than before Guidance was deployed.
Structured tasks is a project that aims to break down editing workflows into a series of steps. We hope newcomers can accomplish these tasks easily.
In the previous newsletter, we asked for feedback from community members on the idea. We had a good discussion in six languages with 35 community members ( summary here). We have now posted new design mockups. We hope community members can check the mockups out and react to them (in any language). They are posted along with some of the main questions we are thinking about as we continue to refine our plans.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.
As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.
Learn more about the findings.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Newcomer task experiments results
The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.
In November 2019, the Growth team added the " newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.
This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:
We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.
Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.
You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page
General metrics
As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:
Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.
Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.
A separate list for workshops hosts
During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.
Claiming multiple mentees at once
Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.
The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714
Growth team's newsletter prepared by
the Growth team and posted by
bot •
Give feedback •
Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to
use a magic word, {{#mentor}}
, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
" Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
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.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)