User talk:K6ka/Archives/2020/December

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Izno

Guideline and policy news
 * There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news
 * Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration
 * Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 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)

Tech News: 2020-50
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function.

Changes later this week
 * Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
- I brought an image of two women to the Main page, DYK? ... after the article of one was proposed for deletion? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't that be four years? (Although I will gladly accept six as I was indeed fighting vandalism with music in 2014!) — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 13:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You are right, but I'll leave it ;) - Six is the template, DYK? I forgot to change. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:59, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes
 * The  template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes
 * You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
 * Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a  tag that can convert a piece of text on a page.
 * Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho


Donner60 (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.


 * Danke! We haven't interacted in a while, good to see you're still alive after this carnival ride. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 16:03, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Strangely enough given lockdowns, I was a little less active, at least in terms of edits, earlier this year. I did create some articles and add to my online library pages which accounts for some of that. Glad to see you are safe and active. Donner60 (talk) 23:17, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas, K6ka!!
Happy Holidays text.png Hello K6ka: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, The SandDoctor  Talk 16:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Yo Ho Ho


Denisarona (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.

— Preceding undated comment added 10:33, 26 December 2020

The Signpost: 28 December 2020
 * Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2020 (UTC)