User talk:Zoeannl

Archives: 2015 2018

John Ruskin
I am starting proofreading some of Ruskin's books. I found a volume of "Fors Clavigera" that you uploaded. Do you think you could upload the whole set, please? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 02:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi,
 * I don’t remember why I didn’t upload the rest. May be they weren’t available, or… As usual, IA is a mess. There is no indication in the description about which volume it is, and where are the other ones. :( And then this probably needs renaming. I found 16 volumes (0 to 15), but there are duplicates. If you could look at it, and tell me which files are needed, it would be great. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:03, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * vol 1&2 and vol 3&4 says "complete in 4 volumes" but doesn't have a date of publishing. vol 1&2 and vol 3&4, published 1886 seems identical. I'd go with the latter two books. What do you think ? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "complete in 4 volumes" ? But is volume 7… It doesn’t make sense. We need to find a complete set before uploading anything. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The copy you have found is an English publisher who published the letters in at least 12 volumes. The U.S. publishers published all of the letters in 4 volumes. I did a quick look through to compare and found no difference between the English and U.S. publications. There doesn't seem to be a complete set of the English volumes on IA so I think this is the best we can do. Better than not having any edition at all. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:02, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 7
Thank you for all the validation work on the OHQ! Gave me a smile to start my day. -Pete (talk) 18:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi Pete, I've been enjoying reading OHQ, and proofreading as I go along, but must admit these tables are hard work. Appendix G was particularly horrible, could you do the transclusion so I can see if I've made a mash up of it? It will boost my fortitude to tackle the rest. Cheers, Zoe Zoeannl (talk) 03:22, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to help out, and a little embarrassed to see the state I had left them in -- I thought I had put the appendix material in a more readable format than I did. Do you mean Document G in the appendix? I don't see much wrong with it, you've done a really good job; the only thing I can see (and without a little research, I don't know how to fix it) is the extra dots on the "total" lines (and the lines immediately above). I can read up on the relevant templates. Anything else you want me to dig into? I'm happy to work on the remaining un-validated pages, but have been cautious about stepping on your toes! -Pete (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, I wanted to let you know. I have tried several times to figure out how TOCstyle works, and I am just stumped. Maybe if I really put my mind to it I could learn it, but the time I've put into it thus far seems like it's for nothing. I am thinking I will just work the data into simpler HTML/wiki tables, which might not mimic the original format as precisely, but will I think at least permit the reader to get the information in the articles. Again, thank you for your help, and I'm sorry I couldn't reciprocate in the way you requested. -Pete (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The author of TOCstyle and I had a long conversation on my talk page that led to its present (incomplete) state. It's archived if you want to have a look. My own notes are a bit obtuse but are on my Proofreader's guide. Unfortunately, during my last hiatus, he seems to have had a blow-up with the mods and disappeared. I have asked for help on a couple of occasions on Scriptorium and there seem to be a few who understand how it works, but no joy getting anything major fixed. I am trying to come up with a resource to encourage proofreaders to work at WS. Tables are a turn off. Usually TOCstyle has very satisfying results... Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:47, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * P.S I am a bit stretched atm but do intend to get back to the tables when my stamina is on the ascendant again.
 * Thank you, your proofreader's guide looks quite useful. I'll take a look, and maybe see if I can redouble my efforts on the TOC style template. I suspect I'll learn some other tricks I've missed out on, as well -- thanks for sharing it.
 * I wonder if you could expand on your statement that tables are a turn off. Do you mean tables as a general concept (i.e., text grouped in shapes to convey meaning) or are you referring to the HTML table tag? Is your primary concern for proofreaders or readers? Is it the consistency of the display across web browsers? the flexibility of the format for future reuse? Maybe it would be useful to put some commentary on this topic in your guide as well?
 * In this case (and in many cases where I encounter tables and charts in original texts), my primary motivation is to complete the encompassing text. In that context, I'd like to present the contents of the tables in a way that is accurate, and where the text is searchable (which rules out simply uploading image files). More precision than that is not my main motivation. But, to the extent there are tools that will let me do a better job, I'd like to learn them.
 * For now, I'm just working on other volumes (Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 3 is getting close!) but I hope to get enough of a handle on the relevant templates to return to Vol. 7 soon. -Pete (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #5
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.

New projects for discussion
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".


 * Engagement emails: this project was first discussed positively by community members here back in September 2018, and the team how has bandwidth to pursue it. The idea is that newcomers who leave the wiki don't get encouraged to return to the wiki and edit.  We can engage them through emails that send them the specific information they need to be successful – such as contact from a mentor, the impact of their edits, or task recommendations.  Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns.  Do you think this is a good idea?  Where could we go wrong?
 * Newcomer homepage: we developed the idea for this project after analyzing the data from the welcome survey and EditorJourney datasets. We saw that many newcomers seem to be looking for a place to get started – a place that collects their past work, options for future work, and ways to learn more.  We can build this place, and it can connect to the engagement emails.  The content of both could be guided by what newcomers say they need during their welcome survey, and contain things like contact from a mentor, impact of their edits, or task recommendations.  Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns.  Do you think this is a good idea?  Where could we go wrong?

Initial reports on newcomer activity
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.


 * Welcome survey: the initial report on welcome survey responses is available here. Some of the main findings:
 * Most users respond to the survey, giving it high response rates of 67% and 62% in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, respectively.
 * The survey does not cause newcomers to be less likely to edit.
 * The most common reason for creating an account in Korean Wikipedia is to read articles—not for editing—with 29% of Korean users giving that responses.
 * Large numbers of respondents said they are interested in being contacted to get help with editing: 36% in Czech and 53% in Korean.
 * Understanding first day: the initial report on what newcomers do on their first day is available here. Some of the main findings:
 * Large numbers of users view help or policy pages on their first day: 42% in Czech and 28% in Korean.
 * Large numbers of users view their own User or User Talk page on their first day: 34% in Czech and 39% in Korean.
 * A majority of new users open an editor on their first day – but about a quarter of them do not go on to save an edit during that time.

Help panel deployment
The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:


 * About 400 newcomers in each wiki have seen the help panel button.
 * About 20% of them open up the help panel.
 * About 50% of those who open it up click on one of the links.
 * About 5% of Czech users ask questions, and about 1% of Korean users ask questions.

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.

How to create a good feedback page?
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. ''

Pentagon Papers
A bunch of the index pages still need to be properly set up as well with the scans possibly fixed. Is there a particular section that interests you? MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:38, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I tend to just start at the beginning and work through. Unless there are a lot of tables to slog through, that I might put aside for when I'm up to the challenge. I am interested in the different style of proofreading, is this continuing as Guerillawarfare set it up or has it been superseded? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:46, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Roughly as she did... I mostly finished up the sections she did but lately have been working my way through the primary source scans (e.g. Index:Pentagon-Papers-Part-V-B-3d.djvu) to be able to link to them from the narrative text. These often have tables / formatting etc. The next unstarted section in the narrative is already set up here: Index:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. B. 3.djvu. MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:01, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Let me know if you have any questions. I can take a look at linking the indices back to the main page next week MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:06, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #6
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.

Plans for the next three months
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:


 * Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
 * Continued iteration on help panel
 * Make the help panel available to more wikis
 * Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
 * Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
 * Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers

Newcomer homepage
The newcomer homepage is our current major project. We hope that community members can read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. You can see in the accompanying mockup how we are thinking about the homepage.

We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
 * Shown in the User space
 * Desktop only (mobile comes next)
 * Four modules
 * Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
 * Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
 * Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
 * Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
 * Layout not yet personalized for each user

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.

Help panel
During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
 * 2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
 * 422 of them have opened it
 * 175 have clicked links
 * 27 have run searches
 * 40 have asked questions

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 added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
 * The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.

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)

Philosophical Review
Thank you for noticing my work on the Philosophical Review. I had just finished a 19-volume work, and was searching for another, when I found the Review. I have enjoyed working on it.

I have never liked the look of no spaces around dashes, so I have never followed that rule. However, since you started the work on the Review, I will yield to your expertise, and have stopped work on the Review. You will need to check every page I have completed, as there are a lot of extra spaces you will not like.

Cheers.

Susanarb (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #7
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.

Newcomer homepage release this week
The main feature that the team has been working on over the last month is the newcomer homepage. This feature gives newcomers a place on the wiki to get oriented, learn about editing, and see their impact (see the accompanying screenshot from Test Wikipedia). We intend to release this feature to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias on May 2nd.

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:


 * Additional questions will come to the help desk from the "help module" on the homepage.
 * Mentors who have signed up for the "mentorship module" will start to receive questions on their user talk pages.
 * More users may create and edit user pages through the "start module".



Recent and future homepage development
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:


 * Mobile design: to work well in mobile browsers, the homepage needs a separate design and engineering. See the accompanying mockups for potential mobile designs.
 * Features for discovery: only about 15% - 30% of newcomers will discover their homepage by clicking their username at the top of their browser. We are going to be designing additional ways for newcomers to find out about it.
 * Additional modules: the initial version contains some of the simpler modules. Potential upcoming modules include task recommendations and a feed of activity on the wiki.

Other updates

 * Help panel leading indicators: our team published data on the help panel's initial performance. The evaluation exposes some areas for improvement, but we think the help panel's behavior so far is healthy and that it is not having a negative impact on the wikis.  We will be publishing additional data, making plans, and asking for community thoughts around the future of the help panel over the course of the next two weeks.  If you are interested in trying out the help panel on your wiki, please let us know on our team's talk page.
 * Long term plans: the team had a week of planning meetings, in which we talked about some longer-term ideas for Growth work. Some of the top ideas are: to extend the newcomer homepage to help user's build their identity through a user profile, and to revisit the "engagement emails" project that the team put on hold.  Over the next month, we will be asking for community conversation around how the team can spend our time in the next fiscal year, that starts in July.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 16:19, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019
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:


 * What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
 * How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
 * How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?

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)

Growth team updates #8
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.

General news

 * The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
 * Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
 * Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.

Early results from newcomer homepage release



 * The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not.  They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
 * After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
 * About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
 * About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
 * Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
 * Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.

Next steps for homepage



 * Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
 * Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
 * Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage.  The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
 * User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.

Future of team in the next year

 * The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
 * Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
 * Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
 * Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
 * Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
 * Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
 * Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
 * We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Quotes at Index:Sin and Crime.pdf
I started validating some of the pages on this work but noticed that there were curly quotes in the proofread text. I used TemplateScript to clear the linebreaks after I checked the proofreading, but TS also automatically converts curly quotes to typewriter quotes per the current guideline. There's an ongoing discussion about allowing the use of curly quotes so I'm not sure if you'd prefer them to be kept in? —Nizolan (talk) 20:09, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The OCR had curly quotes so I didn't bother to convert. It seems to be an issue of compatibility with computer fonts? I'm fine with the bot conversions. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:29, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I finished validating and put it up on the main page new texts list. Interesting little pamphlet. —Nizolan (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #9
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.

Opening Growth features to more wikis
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:


 * Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
 * Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
 * EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.

General news

 * A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
 * Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
 * Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
 * Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
 * Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
 * We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language.  This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.

Mobile homepage and early analysis

 * The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
 * We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
 * Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
 * As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey
Share your experience in this survey

Hi ,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. [mailto:surveys@wikimedia.org Email us] if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely, RMaung (WMF) 14:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey
Share your experience in this survey

Hi ,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. [mailto:surveys@wikimedia.org Email us] if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely, RMaung (WMF) 19:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #10
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.

General news

 * Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). 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 configuring the features.
 * We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage.  In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
 * You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!

Growth at Wikimania

 * Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
 * Here are the most important links:
 * Notes and learnings from Wikimania
 * Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
 * Slides from Growth team presentation
 * These are some of our topline notes:
 * Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
 * Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
 * Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!

 * The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
 * We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
 * These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
 * Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
 * How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests.  We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
 * How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit.  We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
 * We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
 * You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page.  Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers?  What are we missing?

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey
Share your experience in this survey

Hi ,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. [mailto:surveys@wikimedia.org Email us] if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely, RMaung (WMF) 17:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #11
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.

General news

 * Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias.  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 you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
 * Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
 * The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!

Help panel results
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).
 * In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
 * This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
 * We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
 * We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.

Newcomer tasks deployment



 * The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates.  In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits.  We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
 * We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
 * These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
 * V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team.  The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article.  We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
 * V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
 * The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #12
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.

General news

 * A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
 * Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks
We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.




 * About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
 * When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
 * 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
 * 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
 * Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
 * Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed
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".


 * On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
 * In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks
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.


 * Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
 * Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
 * Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Index:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu
Hi. I see that you did some of the early work on this index. I also see that the proofreading (first round) is complete, and much of the work is not transcluded. I am wondering whether you are able to spend some time to transclude the remainder of the work. Thanks if you can. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Is there a way to tell which pages I didn't proofread? I'm happy to transclude what I can though I am technologically disabled atm having broken my computer a few months back. My son has promised his old one when he has finished getting his new one going so am looking forward to doing more proofreading soon. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 01:32, 9 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Bad news about the computer. I was mentioning the transcluding to main namespace which needed doing, rather than the proofreading. That said, we have a gadget in preferences Pages I can validate... in the Pages section that will show highlight proofread pages that you didn't progress to that stage. If you cannot, it is not an issue, I know that some enjoy transcluding works where they have proofread, so was mentioning that. — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:32, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Transcription links
Please do not add transcription links for works that have been fully transcribed. These links are meant to be temporary and should be removed once a work has been transcribed. Once a work has been transcribed, that link should be removed from the author page, or other general Wikisource pages where it was listed. You can always create a list of links in your own User space, or on a Project page if they are helpful. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:41, 9 February 2020 (UTC) I add links to works that have no Index page e.g. have been copied from Project Gutenberg, so they can be proofread against a scan. Is this not helpful? Zoeannl (talk) 08:45, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
 * See The Age of Innocence, which is not a Gutenberg copy. This book had an Index page and has been fully proofread. Adding an external link beside that work is likely to result in duplicated and unnecessary work. We have a scan-backed copy from an Index page. The same is true of The Marne and Glimpses of the Moon; both novels have an Index page where all the pages have been proofread. Likewise all of her listed novellas have been proofread from scans, but you added external links to those as well. A Motor-Flight Through France was part of a PotM a couple of years ago, and has been done, and The Book of the Homeless is complete except for the musical notation on four pages. Adding external links or Index pages to works that have already been completely proofread from a scan is counter-productive, so please don't spam external links on Author pages.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
 * "Spam" seems like a pretty harsh word for this activity. I read through this to check against my own practices. While I agree with the underlying point EP is making, I appreciate the effort to provide useful info to the reader. Edith Wharton was one of my favorite authors as a kid. Nice to see people making her work more available. -Pete (talk) 14:12, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Plans to transclude?
Hi. I see that you completed Index:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu Are you planning to transclude it to the main ns? Or is that a task from someone else? (not wanting to step on toes) — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I’m not really up to anything other than proofreading atm. I’m working 66 hrs/week essential and proofreading is a rare break. Please feel free to pass it on to anyone interested. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 04:40, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Saw your summary...
"(‎Not proofread: table to do)" and wanted to show that simple tables can have simple (shorter?) solutions. Please check Page:Education of the Negro.djvu/15 for avoiding tables while doing short tables. :-) I possible overuse Dotted TOC line, but most any use of other templates feels like overuse. Shenme (talk) 03:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #13
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.

Join the conversation: structured tasks
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.

Expanding to more wikis
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!

Other updates


Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.


 * In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
 * In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test.  See the full results here.
 * We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
 * Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.

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)

Transclusion
So I want a guide to Transclusion for Proofreaders. For people who know how to proofread but are absolute beginners at wiki. They should have done some proofreading on WS and be familiar with using templates. I would expect that the namespace and pagespace are concepts they are coming to terms with and doing transclusions would be a good way to get confident and familiar with the structure of Wikisource books.

What is transclusion?
"Transclusion" is the way we get text from the Page namespace to the main namespace. The Page namespace is where text is meant to be proofread. The main namespace is where text is meant to be read.

Transclusion copies the text across whenever anyone wants to read the page in the main namespace. It is still linked to the Page namespace. So any changes made to the text in the Page namespace will be seen in main namespace as well.

When to transclude
The preferred time to transclude text to the main namespace is after all of the pages have been validated (green page status) and the proofreading is all done.

Sometimes it can help with the proofreading if you can see what the final version will look like in the main namespace. If so, you can transclude pages to the main namespace before the proofreading is all done. As the main namespace is the one we want people to read, we would like it to look as neat and tidy as possible. So please try to only transclude text that is in as good a condition as possible.


 * From: Help:Beginner's guide to transclusion

Simple transclusion
Single author, simple title, short front matter


 * 1. Go to the Index page of the book you want to transclude.
 * 2. There should be a red link for the title. Right click this. Go to the base page Title.
 * If it is not red—create the link by editing the Index page, contact the project manager from the Discussion page, or ask for Help. There are Naming conventions to consider.


 * 3. Click to load the header template to the base page. Add at the bottom of the page.
 * 4. The title, year and author parts need to be filled in. Open the Index page in Edit and copy.
 * 5. The beginning of the book, including the title page is called the Front Matter. Make the link to the next section ( |next=Chapter 1 ). Transclude (see below) the front matter pages on to the base page Title ; copy the file name from the index page–Index:file name.djvu; determine the first and last pages of the front matter of the book from the Index page.
 * 6. Preview and check all of the front matter pages are present and correct. Right click next section, Chapter 1, on the preview. Copy the header template from Front matter and paste on to the Chapter 1 section. Publish page (the Front matter section)
 * 7. Fill in the Chapter 1 section. Edit the copied template: section=Chapter 1; |previous=Front matter ; |next=Chapter 2 (note addition of ../)
 * 8. The Title of this section comes from the book. See Style_guide. So section=Chapter 1 or the chapter title from the book (which you can copy from the preview). Transclude this section. Preview. Check. Right click next section. Copy this section header template. Publish page.
 * 9. Paste and fill in next section. This gets really easy when you are moving through the chapters: Add to the chapter number for previous=, and next=. Preview. Copy chapter title. Right click next chapter. Paste chapter title. Copy header template. Publish page. Go to next section.
 * 10. At the end of the book, you may have an Index
 * 11 You don’t have to transclude Advertisements at the end of the book.

Transclusion displays the contents found on another page without having to copy-paste nor synchronize any later changes. It is most commonly used to group text into logical and reasonably sized chunks—most frequently as chapters or sections. Examine the transcluded text at The Wind in the Willows (1913)/Chapter 1 and compare with some of the source text found at Page:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu/19. As the individual pages from Index:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu were saved in the "Page:" namespace, they populated into the chapters of the book through transclusion. Creating readable sections from scanned pages is the most common use of transclusion on Wikisource.

How to transclude full pages
From the book, note the first and last page of the chapter/section. These pages are listed for inclusion in the section below the header template.

The syntax for is as follows:


 * "file name.djvu" is replaced with the exact name of the Index you are working with.
 * The number after the slash (/) following the file name of the first page you wish to transclude is "x".
 * The number after the slash (/) following the file name of the final page you wish to transclude is "y".


 * Help:Transclusion
 * Template:Header for more complicated books


 * Preceding/foundation help pages: Help:Namespaces,

Help:Contents

We sent you an e-mail
Hello ,

Really sorry for the inconvenience. This is a gentle note to request that you check your email. We sent you a message titled "The Community Insights survey is coming!". If you have questions, email surveys@wikimedia.org.

You can see my explanation here.

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Growth team updates #15
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 deployed
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.

Structured tasks: add a link
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.

Community news

 * We recently deployed the Growth features to Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish Wikipedias. 18 wikis now have Growth features. Learn more about getting the features.
 * Have you recently checked if all interface messages are translated for your language?

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 10:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16
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.

Growth features show impact
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.
 * the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
 * the probability that they are retained as editors
 * the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

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:
 * more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
 * more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
 * more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D
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.

News for mentors
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 to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news
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)

Wikibooks hosting annotated Wikisource books
Hi Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away. So, I proofread and I have no idea what you did but Economic Sophisms looks much better with formatting. Thank you. May I ask why you use the narrow columns? I would prefer the wider format as more readable.

I have a number of WS books I have proofread that I would like to annotate on WB so I’m looking forward to your ebook export! Are you planning to export the book from WS or somehow link to the WS pagespace and have a transcluded book on WB? In terms of annotation the first would be preferred as it would be stable; though as a proofreader I would rather the latter (which I had deemed not possible). On consideration I have settled on this preference: to transfer fully validated books as a stable version for annotation but to have a way to notify changes in the original WS version to see if the WB version needs updating-I would presume these would be small proofreading errors where the original text had not been faithfully transcribed and would not include formatting or typographical changes.

It would be nice if there was a link to the original WS pagespace on the WB page, as there is on the transcluded WS page. As a proofreader I feel this is a major strength of WS-to be able to see the original page image source.

Do you have any preferences/ideas on how to create annotated wikibooks? I have seen annotations as footnotes; linked as per references; The_Grand_Inquisitor seems to be an attempt at side-by-side text and annotation which looks promising and is appealing; The_Poetry_of_Gaius_Valerius_Catullus is interesting, I wonder if the annotations and links to WS could be added to the tables; Biblical studies are comprehensive collations of annotations and perhaps something to aim for-could the discussion page be a place for individual contributions and consensus?

The WB William Shakespeare's Works is very sad, it shows a lot of confusion about the connection to WS which supports the plan to export the WS books to WB for annotation; it proposes individual commentary as per a discussion page which seems a good idea to try as it allows individual contributions and discussion. Here is a book of commentary on WS that could be used as the basis of discussion but would be best with the commentary side-by-side, I think, rather than linking to a separate page of commentary.

I personally would love to provide a platform for collaborative discussion and crowd-sourcing material which supports better understanding of literature. It has very exciting possibilities!

It would be good to set up exemplars of possible approaches so people could try out what might work best for them/for the work they are interested in.

Finally, re Wikibook policy It’s a bit vague but it suggests that the WB books should have some level of "significant" annotation; WS policy is that WS books that are wikified (i.e. have WP, Wict, WQ etc links) are not suitable for WS, therefore should live at WB. Is it possible to use a bot to wikify a book so it immediately becomes annotated "significantly" and isn’t a candidate for deletion?

I hope this doesn’t scare you off. I feel better putting my thoughts down in print and would be very happy for any feedback. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:48, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi there, and sorry for the brief reply:
 * Annotated copies is not something I am aiming at or thinking about, but I am happy to help a bit where that is useful, as we have the shared aim (I think) of easy export of ebooks from Wikibooks, and retaining Wikisource features on Wikibooks so migration for you, and ebook export for me, is easy.
 * Here are two books I have been working on:
 * wikibooks:Jánua Linguárum Reseráta (this is a modernised version of an old Latin learners text)
 * Musica Classica (this is lyrics to famous classical pieces in Latin)
 * On narrow columns, the reason is readability. This is why newspapers use narrow columns for instance, and why books are tall rather than wide. It is harder when you read to know where the start of the next sentence is on a wide text area than a smaller width. For long text a balance is needed, however, as moving to the next line is also tiring on the eyes.
 * Wikipedia's default width is very wide, and not IMO good for long texts. it works on Wikipedia etc because it is usually frequently broken up. Not so much for trancribed books IMO.
 * Re Wikibook policy I am sure that the question is fine so long as you are doing work on it. Nobody will mind so long as that is taking place. As for bots, that's a bit hard to imagine it doing siginficiant annotation work as surely annotation requires human context, unless you already know the values you are trying to insert. JimKillock (talk) 11:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Jánua Linguárum Reseráta looks really nice. What text is it sourced from? I would happy to proofread it on WS (I did Latin at school). Would you like me to proofread Latin for beginners (1911)?


 * Can we have links to corresponding WS pagespaces on the WB page. I think the header template does it automatically on WS? I’m glad you think this is easy, I don’t want to be a pain but YES I would like WS features on WB books. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 23:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17


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.

Structured tasks
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.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features
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.

Variant testing
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.

News for mentors
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, , 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)

Growth Newsletter #18
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.

Structured tasks


"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.

News for mentors

 * We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
 * We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.

Community configuration


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.

Scaling

 * Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,.
 * A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
 * After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Project Guide and em-dashes
Hi Zoeannl,

In doing some maintenance I noticed that in User:Zoeannl/Project guideline/Proofreader’s Guide/Dashes, Hyphens, and Minus Signs and User talk:Zoeannl/Project guideline/Proofreader’s Guide/Dashes, Hyphens, and Minus Signs you use the template. This template was deleted in 2016 after a community discussion, so it shows up on a list of transcluded non-existant templates. If you could remove these transclusions that would be appreciated.

In addition, I notice the pages say using the template is necessary when an em-dash occurs inside another formatting template. So far as I know this is not correct: you should be able to use raw em-dashes and other special characters inside template arguments without problems. The exceptions are the vertical bar (|), equals signs (=), and curly braces ({ and }) because these characters have special meaning in template syntax. I realise the pages are 5+ years old and that you've probably found this out in the mean time, but I figured I'd mention it just in case since I happened across it. Xover (talk) 20:04, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual
You did most of the work on this -- at least, every Page I checked had your name on it. I see from your contributions that you are here every few days or so. I finished putting it "up" and I am soon going to put this into New Texts, as it is beautiful, but I am going to wait a few days to see if you have objections or changes to make or whatever.

Your work on this is pretty much from 2017. I cannot help but to wonder, were you just done done done with it or disgusted or very bored (all things I have felt while working on works, I confess).

So: Go? No!? Wait...? Or maybe you are done caring? It is a beautiful work.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 00:34, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for asking. I did as much as I could. Part of the reason for doing it is to have a reference for how to do things on Wikisource. I am a proofreader from Project Gutenberg and still trying to figure out how best to proofread here. I have a proofreading guide I use on my user page: User:Zoeannl/Project guideline. It has another couple of works related to this.
 * I struggle with the markup and general philosophy on WS. Are you interested in helping me with gaps in my understanding? I really would like a proofreading guide that works for proofreaders but it gets too hard for me. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 23:27, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * It does need internal links done… Zoeannl (talk) 23:37, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I wonder if the "struggle" is all in your head. I suggest this because the style guide was very complicated with the templates and such.  Did you use software for the templates?


 * My history is some with gutenberg, but I mainly trolled SR and looked for images that needed some work. I uploaded something there, I think I might have been on a auto-accept but I botched it by including a LaTeX version and was told there was no one there who could eh, whatever the two letter code is for approving the publication.


 * At wikimediadom, my main learning experience is at commons. Here, I just plod along and if I do something wrong, someone will notice and tell me.  I too did a style guide!


 * The "Editing help" docs are good, next to the Cancel button in the edit window. They have a style guide I have yet to read, regardless of how much I was encouraged to read it; it can be gotten to from that help link.


 * You actually have more experience than me here, I think. I have seen some bullying occasionally, but they either help or can get over it, as near as I have seen.  The proofing seems to attract a certain type of perfectionist.  Proofing isn't what I am great/best at....  Maybe that list of notes you have shows that you are a nervous perfectionist, and maybe I am wrong, but what I have done is 1) hand type the templates because that is what I did at commons that worked well for me. 2)  Trolled beautiful and complicated works to see what templates they have used and how they did things. 3) check the diffs out for when someone helps (as seen in the Watchlist.


 * The recent Help requests with people new from gutenberg (at least I think that was what was going on) there seemed to be confusion between the proofing area and Main. I finished what another sourcerer had done, putting your proofed copy into the Main space.  At gutenberg, the zip file goes up and the html is an optional link.  Here, if you want, you can put it into the equivalent of the gutenberg html link one chapter at a time, as I am doing with two texts I am working on right now. The Message of the Stars and The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.  They don't mind as long as you put Incomplete on it.  "They like Capitalized Titles Here in the Main".


 * About the internal links, if you are talking about the index, those are somewhat optional to link (at least, as far as the incomplete template goes) but you have that badboy all anchored really nicely. Honestly, I feel like I am giving Olga Korbut (that is showing my age not yours probably) a pep talk before approaching the balance beam.  You could link the index at your leisure.


 * Honestly, I was going to give you a week to get back to me, and then put it at New Texts. Once there, there is a really good bot that runs through looking for little often occuring errors.  And it will get trolled over by interested sourcerers.  I had some problems that only could be seen in the Main, with the nesting.  That might be a problem when it gets announced.  A couple could only be fixed by ending the "numbered" twice in a row and I could not see where it was wrong earlier in the work.


 * I think I have typed too many unhelpful words. I really liked the style guide!--RaboKarbakian (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, the struggle is definitely in my head! I give up when things get too hard. I proofread because I find it easy and I enjoy reading the books as I go. ShakespeareFan00 did some of the tricky parts of the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual.

My proofreading guide is taken from Distributed Proofreaders and translated as well as I can for WS. I am trying to get my head around templates. I believe using templates is the way to go but there are inconsistencies and anachronisms that bother me—like why doesn’t bar have a size parameter like the others i.e. it has 2 instead of 2em; also on the drop down list of "Wiki markup" on the edit screen—can we just remove the HTML markup and have the most common templates? Do you know how to change the menu? And what are the different types of template that can’t nest in each other (span?)?

I don’t aim for perfection, just consistency, so proofreaders don’t get pulled up for "mistakes" that are a result of idiosyncracies of WS and/or other users. I would like a PG badge that gives me a pass to proofread according to the Proofreading guide. The DP guide has a training system that would be a good foundation for proofreading here…

Where is your style guide?

The internal links needed are the "See x section" type.

We have worked on a book together before:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms. I finished the proofreading but there are illustrations still to process. Is a link to Wikispecies a straightforward task?

Oh, and do feel free to launch the style manual, Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 00:40, 15 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Heh, (about the style guide). The images I was working on for WWB are on my computer which died.


 * Handbook of style in use at the Riverside Press is my style guide, in violation of the Capitalized Titles here. I have completed a completely unreadable text as well The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms, in two halves, each unreadable for different reasons.  One, a translation of the 1614 proof that caused Kepler to make his laws of motion which caused Newton to invent physics and calculus.  Even modern math proofs are a challenge for reading.  The second half is an 1889 accounting of even then old texts of the original work which was in Latin and others related to it.  I really loved the first half.  I really love that the second half is done.  I don't expect it to be validated, it is a terrible terrible text, but I am quite pleased with it.


 * Lately, the interwiki links are added to the Main space via Wikidata. The wikipedia link on the Canon came from "Main subject" which is at the wikidata page for the text, as is the commons link and also would be for wikispecies (if it were biological).  Wikivoyage links show up also, iirc, as do wikiversity, wikitionary and wikibooks, etc.  Wikidata is a different thing; I want to recommend that people make two datas for each work, one for the scan & index and one for the Main.  That is how it works best with commons, but the enthusiasm for doing that here is not so great, maybe.  An example might be seen at File:A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Rackham).djvu.  All of the information there, with the exception of the license, source and the Image page are coming from wikidata.  Click on the "View on Wikimedia Commons" at the top and then hit the edit button and you can see how little information has been entered there.  For the images, File:Midsummer-Nights Dream-Rackham-025.jpg I use the same template as for the djvu.  It needs to know the wikidata id number (starts with a Q) and the name of the djvu file needs to go into Image =, then, given the page number it opens the text file to the page the image came from!  I think that is just great!


 * There is a setting in Preferences for commons that puts the Categories on top. I recommend this, but for your ease right now commons:Category:A Midsummer-Night's Dream (1914, Doubleday) will show what wikidata can do with the link for the Main.  I put a title page at wikidata for the book.  Well, this example is not good because it is a new text and there is no main for it....  See commons:Category:Undine (1919) which has a link to the wikisource Main for the work.


 * I would like to encourage the two different data items (one for the main and one for the scan & index) and I would also like to encourage people when they make the data items to simply fill out as much of a book or article citation as possible and a "main subject" if appropriate, but things are not so settled at wikidata that I can encourage that.


 * About the templates here. I had tons of problems when I first started because hws is "start" and &lt;section&gt; is "begin".  But, to make them use one or the other would be insanely difficult at this point.  The templates are made by just people and they all do things a little differently and are at different levels of expertise.  Perhaps if there is a big project with multiple works involved you could make special versions of the templates that bother you.  Templates have a lot of brackets<<--that is my experience with them.


 * There is a User area in the dropdown Insert doey, but I don't know how to put things there. I don't use the edit gui here very often.  I make notes on my computer and I have some template categories bookmarked and when possible, I just type things I know like &amp;sect; which is &sect; which I just typed today and will probably always just remember, because it is simple.


 * Well, like I said, my experience is more at commons.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 01:35, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

wicked steps
I remember seeing a list like User:Zoeannl/Project guideline before.

Mostly I am here (again/still) to mention that I was trying to use my style guide as an example for templates to use and I also tried different templates with it and uploaded it to my ereader to see how it worked there.

I am not sure that the textual content of style guides are all that great for here. If I understand it correctly, ws uses what was published (even typos) as long as it is searchable. &fflig; (&amp;fflig;) and &ffllig; (&amp;ffllig;) are not searchable, for instance, but &aelig; (&amp;aelig;) is.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:55, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

substituting Template:author link
Hi. When you are using the author link / al, please could you substitute its use author name. All the existing link disambiguation tools around need to see a raw link to be able to do their magic. Thanks. — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:24, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * As an addenda, are you aware that we can Help:pipe trick links like author so typing Author:Alexandre Dumas produces >Alexandre Dumas . That trick works in a number of places, and it is a great time saver. — billinghurst  sDrewth  23:26, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Fast Proofreading
I’m interested in what tips you have to improve the speed (and accuracy?) of proofreading at WS.

I’m very much believe we shouldn’t be trying to reinvent the wheel and should use Project Gutenberg/Distributed Proofreaders Proofreaders guidelines as the tried and true way of teaching and monitoring proofreading skills. Have you been to ? It takes at most only a few hours of practice to get to P1 and F1 grades. Everything else about WS publishing is superior to PGDP but their system of training up proofreaders consistently is excellent. And fast! If we build WS proofreading on the foundation of DP proofreading then I believe it would streamline the proofreading process here.

Laura’s complaint about how difficult it is to "just do proofreading" at WS is very true. Most people would be put off permanently if they had to deal with the sort of feedback I/we’ve had. If we can categorise works as "standardised proofreading", then this should protect proofreaders from harassment. The expectation would be that as long as the proofreading guide is followed then it’s good. This means we would only choose works that could be standardised in this fashion. WS has a lot of scope for people’s idiosyncracies but my proposal would mean that the curated texts would be done by the book-the Proofreading guide (this is my working copy of the PGDP proofreaders guide translated to WS to the best of my inadequate knowledge)

I’m wondering if you have found gains with how you go through the process of editing a page? That sort of walk-through would be very helpful to new proofreaders here. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 22:02, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I apologize for responding late. I don't want it to seem like I'm blowing you off, but I have suddenly become extremely busy, to the point where edits have mostly been quick and minor lately. I'll give you a detailed overview of the methods I've used soon. PseudoSkull (talk) 13:02, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for replying. I've been on a slow burner with this for years and appreciate anyone who wants to make things easier for proofreaders at WS. When your ready. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19
Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

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

Structured tasks

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

News for mentors

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

Community configuration

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

Scaling

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

News for communities

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Errata vs User Corrections
Wanted to drop you a quick note for your proofreading guide. When a user wants to incorporate an item from the errata into the text, they should use errata. However, when the user wants to submit a correction of an error not in the errata, they should use SIC. Languageseeker (talk) 21:03, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Pages, breaks and alignment
Hi! Good work on Karl Marx: The Man and His Work! Just a few notes about some things: Cheers, Inductiveload— talk/contribs 02:52, 29 July 2021 (UTC) from User_talk:Dick_Bos
 * Please avoid  in favour of   for "normal" texts. The latter has special server-side code and also allows the page number links to appear. You can use   to transclude a single page.
 * page break or padded page break should be used rather than rule to split up "separate" pages that are transcluded to the same mainspace page. This is because they signify to paginated devices link e-readers that there is a page break there and the following content will be on a new page.
 * Using gap for alignment in a block will go badly wrong when the page is narrow relative to the font size. See Help:Preparing_for_export for an example. It's better to just use center and right in this case and set a width on the container. This will then display more or less as you expect on all displays.


 * Re rule I (as a proofreader) would only use this where there is a line on the scan and leave it up to the person doing the transclusion to organise page breaks. Does that sound right?


 * Re Help:Block and inline elements This is so cool that you’ve done this. It’s still a bit technical. In my mind, the Block templates break the Inline templates, and sometimes that isn’t obvious until transclusion? That would be the level of understanding I would expect of proofreaders at WS. The list of templates for each type is excellent. Are TOCstyle and ppoem div/block and italic is span/inline but italic block is div/block?


 * Re CSS styling: I find Table style (and the documentation with it) makes tables much less intimidating. The shorthand it uses is easier to type in correctly and to "read" when looking for bugs. Is it possible to use the same shorthand for other templates? e.g. Yours sincerely instead of Yours sincerely or Benjamin Franklin or sc instead of 3em or it instead of Heading This way, proofreaders could learn inline parameter settings in a consistent fashion that enables them to better take on tables which are another level of challenge.

Block templates and hyphens
In response to the questions: for hyphens, yes, you generally do not need hws. You can italicise both halves I think, as long as the hyphen is outside (so it is the last character). If you want to keep the hyphen, you can also use peh (page end hyphen). There are some notes at H:HYPHEN.

And for the block templates: yes, these are to be used when the content is, itself a "block" element. The most common block element is a paragraph as you say, but also lists and tables. In general, block and non-block templates should have basically the same effect on the content. However there are some differences: you can't set a line-height on a non-block template (which is why smaller can look very widely spaced when used for large amounts of text). Also, you can only set internal alignment within a block. A good rule of thumb is if you have a double linebreak in the content, use the block template. More info at H:DIVSPAN. Inductiveload— talk/contribs 22:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #20
Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!

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

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

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

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

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

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

This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
 * Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
 * Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
 * Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.

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

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

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

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #21
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!

New project: Positive reinforcement

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

For mentors

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

Scaling

 * "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
 * "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: . These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works.

Suggested edits

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

Community configuration
Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
 * Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily.
 * Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #22


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

Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
 * About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
 * Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.

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

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

Ongoing projects and explorations


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

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

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

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

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

News for mentors
A new system for the mentors list

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

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

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

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

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

A tip for mentors

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

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

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 Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are, , , ,.
 * 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 instrument page loads and saves of configuration.

Have a question? A suggestion?
Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #23


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

Highlights

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



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

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

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

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

We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
 * Patroller fatigue:
 * By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.

The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
 * Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
 * Add a Link
 * Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
 * The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
 * The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
 * Add an Image
 * Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
 * Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
 * We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023.

Recent changes

 * All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request.
 * 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.
 * Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.

News for mentors

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

Deployments

 * Add a link 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: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 20:58, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #24
Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!

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


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

Newcomer tasks

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

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, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.

Other news

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

Translations

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

 Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations  14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #25
Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Celebrations
Leveling up release


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

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


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

Recent changes

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

Upcoming work

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #26
Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

One million Suggested Edits
We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!
 * The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
 * Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
 * Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
 * Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)

Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.
 * The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis.
 * The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
 * The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image

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

Other updates

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

What's next for Growth?

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #27
Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

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

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

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects: Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.
 * Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
 * Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Community Configuration 2.0
We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:
 * We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback.
 * We have started to investigate design improvements.
 * We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #28
Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations



Community configuration 2.0

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

IP Masking

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

Mentorship

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

Scaling Growth features

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

Other news

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' Trizek_(WMF) m:user_talk:trizek (WMF) 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #29
Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

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

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

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

Add a Link
We released “add a link” 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 Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. 🖂
 * Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
 * A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
 * Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.

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

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. 

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Growth News, April 2024


The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.

If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

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

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

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

Experiment Results
Add a Image experiment analysis results

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


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

Personalized praise experiment results

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

English donors encouraged to try editing

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

Future work
Annual Plan

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

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

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

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. '' 18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)