Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the !

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 . 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.

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, .

Ongoing projects and explorations

We are continuing our work on our new project, . 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 . We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior to iterate and improve designs.

We are exploring the idea of a . We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: and . We will share more details here and on the associated 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: (in English).

Experiments 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).

has been published.

• Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a 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 .

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.

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

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: Ваши подопечные со звездочкой, Ваши подопечные без звездочки.

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.
• Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits.
• Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved.

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.
• Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer to newcomers. These wikis are Греческая Википедия, Польская Википедия, Китайская Википедия, Индонезийская Википедия, Румынская Википедия.
• 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.
• In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now page loads and saves of configuration.

Have a question? A suggestion?

! You can also .

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Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the !

Highlights

• : We released the new to all wikis. This change makes mentorship .
• : An improved impact module is available for testing.

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 starting December 1. You can already test this new module . 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 , 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 . 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 . We also worked on the following improvements:
  • • 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.
  • • 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.

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 " " 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 , 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.
• 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.
• 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 .
  • 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 . 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 or to , and we improved .
• 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.

Deployments

• has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis.

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: , in your preferred language.

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Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the !

Newcomer experience projects

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

• - 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.
• - Host events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
• - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.

Newcomer tasks

• Several communities suggested improving " ", 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.
• The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use , which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models.

Mentorship

• When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria .
• 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.
• 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, . The Growth team can provide and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news

• In Special:SpecialPages , Growth experiments now have their own section.
• 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 . 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.

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Приветствуем вас в двадцать пятой новостной рассылке от !

Празднования

Запуск «повышения уровня»

• 22 марта в рамках изначального мы запустили функции « » на .
• В этом тесте мы используем диалоги постредактирования (всплывающие окна, отображаемые после публикации правки) и уведомления, чтобы побудить новых редакторов попробовать новые типы предлагаемых правок, удобных для новичков.
• Мы внимательно , а также . Если эксперимент покажет положительные результаты, мы выпустим эту функцию на большее количество вики.

Более 5000 изображений добавлено с помощью заданий для новичков за февраль

• В феврале 2023 года с помощью заданий для новичков было добавлено 5035 изображений ( ), из них 155 отменено.
• С момента запуска этого задания было добавлено 36 803 изображения ; 2957 таких правок были отменены.

Свежие правки

• • Послы сообщества завершили первоначальную оценку, которая подтвердила, что приоритизация статей с малым количеством внутренних ссылок привела к лучшим предложениям статей. Затем мы оценили изменения в пилотных вики-проектах Роста, и результаты показывают, что больше новичков успешно выполняют задачу и их правки реже отменяются. Теперь мы развернули новую модель приоритизации для всех вики с включенной функцией «добавить ссылку».
  • Мы продолжаем включать задание «добавить ссылку» в различные языковые разделы Википедии. Все изменения анонсируются в . Если вам интересно, есть ли в вашем разделе такое задание, узнайте об этом на своей домашней странице .
• был развернут на наших пилотных вики, где мы провели A/B-тестирование. Мы опубликовали , и специалист по данным сейчас завершает анализ эксперимента.
• – Жертвователи попадают на страницу «Спасибо» после пожертвования, и эта целевая страница теперь содержит призыв к редактированию: . Эта многообещающая функция тестируется в нескольких разделах Википедии (Французская Википедия, Итальянская Википедия, Японская Википедия, Нидерландская Википедия, Шведская Википедия).
• Функции Роста доступны в тестовых разделах и , где можно проверить их работу.

Предстоящая работа

• – Мы планируем ввести задание для новичков .
  • Мы начинаем работу над дизайном.
  • Послы команды Роста помогли с первоначальной оценкой этих предложений изображений для разделов.
  • Мы скоро начнём консультации с сообществом, где будем делиться своими идеями.
• – Мы будем поддерживать этот проект для всех продуктов и расширений, поддерживаемых командой Роста, на которые может повлиять маскировка IP-адресов.

подготовлена и публикуется • • .

Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the !

One million Suggested Edits

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

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

Positive reinforcement

aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried to keep editing.

• The new was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis.
• The features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
• The 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 . We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway.

Other updates

• We are progressively releasing to more wikis.
• After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated 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 to add .
• We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our .

What's next for Growth?

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

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Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the !

Annual plan for Growth

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

Our first project of the year will be , 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:

• : 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.
• : 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 .

Suggested edits

We released a new to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the 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 . 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 will evaluate the impact in a few months.

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get " ": 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 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.

The Growth team will also host a session at 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 , , and are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's .

In the meantime, initial 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 . 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.

Community Configuration 2.0

We are still in the early planning stage of the project:

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

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Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the !

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 .
• Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors ( ). 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 . This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes ( ), Echo notifications ( ), the Thanks extension ( ) and Mentorship ( ).
• 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 . ( )

Mentorship

• We assembled some resources for mentors at . 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". ( )
• Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis .

Scaling Growth features

• We continue the deployment of the structured task " " 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. ( )
• At some wikis, newcomers have access to the " " 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. ( ) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" .

Other news

• We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily ( ) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline ( ). This is now fixed.
• You can read a . 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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Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the !

Community Conversations

The Growth team will host its first community conversation . The topic for this meeting will be .

This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit 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 to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback.

Add a Link

We released “ ” to 35 more Wikipedias.

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 plans with technical stakeholders.
• Initial have been shared and discussed with community members.
• A basic .
• Developers can find some initial proof of concept code .

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.

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

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.

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

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