From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Wikipedia talk:GTF)

Why do I have a mentor?

I've been here for over 15 years, was on ArbCom, etc. Somehow I clicked on something that gave me that big question mark on the bottom right hand page. Doug Weller talk 14:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Every user has a mentor assigned, but most established users do not have "mentorship" options activated - you may have opted in somehow. In Special:Preferences you can uncheck the Newcomer editor features at the bottom of the page and see if that solves your issue. — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Mentorship Twinkle welcome template?

Hi! I was wondering if there was some welcome template I could use with my mentees, as {{ Welcome student}} doesn't really apply. — ♠ Ixtal ( T / C ) Non nobis solum. ♠ 18:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi Ixtal! There's {{ Mentor welcome}}, or this one I use that I ripped off from Panini! (though its current format doesn't use revisionuser). Happy editing, Perfect4th ( talk) 18:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Lawsuit pending, I copyrighted that. Panini! 🥪 18:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply
What's with all the "noinclude" in there? Doesn't seem to change anything if I remove it? -- asilvering ( talk) 19:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Two reasons, both because I'm lazy: at the bottom, I wanted it to auto-sign, and everywhere else, I was trying to get it to substitute page names correctly and I'm not incredibly familiar with that kind of markup so I just copied over from another template (I forget which) and it worked so I left it. "Noinclude" just means that everything wrapped in those <noinclude></noinclude> tags won't be included in a substitution of the page – so, for example, the <nowiki> tags will be removed at the end when the template is substituted, allowing the ~~~~ to sign it for me. Happy editing, Perfect4th ( talk) 20:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Oh, here I was assuming you were just copying the source code out every time. That makes more sense! I'll just start substing this directly instead of stealing it and modifying it, then. Panini will have to sue us both. (you're welcome). -- asilvering ( talk) 20:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Nah, too much work. I'd suggest double-checking that it correctly identifies you as the mentor, as I had trouble getting that to work correctly when I tried earlier, though I think it's fixed now. (Do we split the costs then, or do we have to pay double?) Perfect4th ( talk) 20:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
yep, it works! Capitalized, alas, but I suppose I could always kidnap and edit it in the future if that drives me enough crazy. -- asilvering ( talk) 20:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
I'm already named in too many lawsuits right now (tongue in cheek) so I'll stick to @Panini!'s original template, modified by @Perfect4th, that remains for public use. lol -- ARose Wolf 20:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Seeking feedback of 'beginner' editors for research

Dear Growth Team mentors, I hope this is an appropriate post to make.

The project I am attached to, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects at Wikimedia Deutschland is currently holding interviews for the experiences of editors knowledge, awareness and experience of Wikidata and its integrations into the sibling projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and the others). We have heard from many expert or very experienced editors, but we lack insights and experiences from new or 'beginner' editors.

If any of your mentees may be interested or you have ideas on where I can post to reach this audience, I would be happy if you could share the Signup link below or reply to my post.

Interview Information:

  • Conducted in English.
  • Compensation is available.
  • Sign up survey: This link can be shared and sent to interested editors.
  • Experience Level: Ideally we are seeking feedback from editors who may only have a passing or surface-level knowledge of Wikidata and are at the start of their editing lifetime.

We are also taking feedback here in written form for those who cannot or do not want to attend an interview. Thank you for any help you can provide, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) ( talk) 16:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

A large but non-random sample of beginning student editors can be found through the Wikipedia Education program. These student editors have different motivations than are typical of new editors (i.e., succeed at their Wikipedia-associated university course) and are likely to leave Wikipedia for good when their course is over, but if that doesn't matter for the purposes of your research, maybe they could help. They have done surveys before, such as for their training program. Adding Sage Ross (WMF). Mathglot ( talk) 19:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Growth News, April 2024

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

A new feature for newcomers: "Suggested links"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This new experience is beneficial for newcomers:

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

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

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

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

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

If you have any questions, let us know!

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

I think this is a great addition for new editors. Is there any way to suggest articles that could be improved by adding links?
And is there a feature that would allow searches for Wikipedians to add links between articles? For example, a major task for our new Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature is to connect the dots between Wikipedia articles about authors who have written electronic literature works, the works themselves (that often refer to other works in the genre), museums and collections that hold the works, and an explanation of what electronic literature is.
Thank you for this new feature. LoveElectronicLiterature ( talk) 15:10, 6 May 2024 (UTC) reply
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Wikipedia talk:GTF)

Why do I have a mentor?

I've been here for over 15 years, was on ArbCom, etc. Somehow I clicked on something that gave me that big question mark on the bottom right hand page. Doug Weller talk 14:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Every user has a mentor assigned, but most established users do not have "mentorship" options activated - you may have opted in somehow. In Special:Preferences you can uncheck the Newcomer editor features at the bottom of the page and see if that solves your issue. — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Mentorship Twinkle welcome template?

Hi! I was wondering if there was some welcome template I could use with my mentees, as {{ Welcome student}} doesn't really apply. — ♠ Ixtal ( T / C ) Non nobis solum. ♠ 18:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi Ixtal! There's {{ Mentor welcome}}, or this one I use that I ripped off from Panini! (though its current format doesn't use revisionuser). Happy editing, Perfect4th ( talk) 18:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Lawsuit pending, I copyrighted that. Panini! 🥪 18:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC) reply
What's with all the "noinclude" in there? Doesn't seem to change anything if I remove it? -- asilvering ( talk) 19:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Two reasons, both because I'm lazy: at the bottom, I wanted it to auto-sign, and everywhere else, I was trying to get it to substitute page names correctly and I'm not incredibly familiar with that kind of markup so I just copied over from another template (I forget which) and it worked so I left it. "Noinclude" just means that everything wrapped in those <noinclude></noinclude> tags won't be included in a substitution of the page – so, for example, the <nowiki> tags will be removed at the end when the template is substituted, allowing the ~~~~ to sign it for me. Happy editing, Perfect4th ( talk) 20:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Oh, here I was assuming you were just copying the source code out every time. That makes more sense! I'll just start substing this directly instead of stealing it and modifying it, then. Panini will have to sue us both. (you're welcome). -- asilvering ( talk) 20:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
Nah, too much work. I'd suggest double-checking that it correctly identifies you as the mentor, as I had trouble getting that to work correctly when I tried earlier, though I think it's fixed now. (Do we split the costs then, or do we have to pay double?) Perfect4th ( talk) 20:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
yep, it works! Capitalized, alas, but I suppose I could always kidnap and edit it in the future if that drives me enough crazy. -- asilvering ( talk) 20:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply
I'm already named in too many lawsuits right now (tongue in cheek) so I'll stick to @Panini!'s original template, modified by @Perfect4th, that remains for public use. lol -- ARose Wolf 20:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Seeking feedback of 'beginner' editors for research

Dear Growth Team mentors, I hope this is an appropriate post to make.

The project I am attached to, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects at Wikimedia Deutschland is currently holding interviews for the experiences of editors knowledge, awareness and experience of Wikidata and its integrations into the sibling projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and the others). We have heard from many expert or very experienced editors, but we lack insights and experiences from new or 'beginner' editors.

If any of your mentees may be interested or you have ideas on where I can post to reach this audience, I would be happy if you could share the Signup link below or reply to my post.

Interview Information:

  • Conducted in English.
  • Compensation is available.
  • Sign up survey: This link can be shared and sent to interested editors.
  • Experience Level: Ideally we are seeking feedback from editors who may only have a passing or surface-level knowledge of Wikidata and are at the start of their editing lifetime.

We are also taking feedback here in written form for those who cannot or do not want to attend an interview. Thank you for any help you can provide, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) ( talk) 16:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

A large but non-random sample of beginning student editors can be found through the Wikipedia Education program. These student editors have different motivations than are typical of new editors (i.e., succeed at their Wikipedia-associated university course) and are likely to leave Wikipedia for good when their course is over, but if that doesn't matter for the purposes of your research, maybe they could help. They have done surveys before, such as for their training program. Adding Sage Ross (WMF). Mathglot ( talk) 19:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Growth News, April 2024

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

A new feature for newcomers: "Suggested links"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This new experience is beneficial for newcomers:

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

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

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

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

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

If you have any questions, let us know!

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

I think this is a great addition for new editors. Is there any way to suggest articles that could be improved by adding links?
And is there a feature that would allow searches for Wikipedians to add links between articles? For example, a major task for our new Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature is to connect the dots between Wikipedia articles about authors who have written electronic literature works, the works themselves (that often refer to other works in the genre), museums and collections that hold the works, and an explanation of what electronic literature is.
Thank you for this new feature. LoveElectronicLiterature ( talk) 15:10, 6 May 2024 (UTC) reply

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