User talk:MMiller (WMF)

Please do post on my talk page! I love learning from as many perspectives as I can.

New Page Patroller
Hi Marshall. I have temporarily accorded your Wikipedia community account the NPR user right. To find out why, please see the messages at User talk:Cloud atlas. Regards, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

AfC vs NPP
Hi Marshall. I think  we all  very  much  appreciate your  engagement  in  the issues concerning  the AfC project. Just out  of curiosity however, I  would be interested to know why, where NPP  is the major concern and a core Wkipedia process, the WMF is prioritising  AfC development  while insisting  that  urgent  improvements to  the Page Curation/New Pages Feed tool they  developed must  wait for  another year to be discussed even for  priority. I ask  this, because a major community  discussion  will  soon  start  regarding combining  the the AfC process into  the NPP GUI -  which  many  volunteers already agree might  be a worthwhile solution. A community consensus will of course decide, but  let's not  forget  that  there are a potential  600  voters from the NPP process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:21, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi . Thanks for the message.  I don't want to cross any wires with respect to the conversation on The future of NPP and AfC talk page, so hopefully Danny's answers help.  I can say that as we've been talking inside the Community Tech team about the potential AfC work, we're keeping in mind that it's possible the processes may be merged.  Therefore, we will try not to build anything that would become obsolete or wasteful if that change comes to pass.  I'll add some more updates to the talk page for that project in the coming days. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:55, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Marshall. We will be launching the RfC on your propsals within the next 24 hours. You will receive a notification. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:11, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Please see my reply. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:56, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment ans suggestion which I have carried out, However, as the actual development is not concerned with the wording or structure of the RfC, I'll make a couple of observations and ask some questions here.

You've probably seen now how difficult it is to hold a structured discussion on anything at Wikipedia even when it is civil and people are generally commenting objectively. This is one of the reasons why there comes a point when a formal RfC has to be held. In spite of this one being presented and hoped for as straw poll, which I have diplomatically call a 'proof of concept', RfAs never turn out as such and there will be a lot of turning and weaving and asking of technical questions. As proposer, I will need to be able to answer them. One question which I anticipate is: Will AfC as we know it be deprecated? If not, and if you are going ahead with these improvements anyway, is my RfC at all necessary? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * we don't have any plans to deprecate AfC. Our only intention has been to help the existing AfC process in the ways that have been discussed.  Any deprecation sounds like a topic for a separate, broader RfC.


 * Regarding the specific RfC at hand for AfC improvements, although we would have gone ahead with this improvement without an RfC because of the amount of discussion and consensus that had already taken place, you pointed out several reasons that an RfC would be valuable here. If the results from the RfC surprise us and we discover that a lot of the community is against these changes, then we'll have learned something important and adjust accordingly.  One thing I do need to underscore, though, is that we won't have bandwidth to expand the scope of work based on the RfC.


 * During the RfC process, I'll be happy to help answer questions and clarify from the perspective of WMF where appropriate.


 * -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * In that case, I see no need for me to go ahead with the RfC. The only reason for launching it was to reassure the AfC people that something was going to be done by the WMF that would enhance their productivity without  forcing hem to use a new system. If your product is good, and complete, as promised, they will use it.  Under these circumstances, running an RfC at this stage will only upset the appple cart because it would give them too much to worry about. What I am interested in is that these offerings will be in the New Pages Feed and will work on Drafts as well as the the other namespace pages that are lised in it and that there will be filters in the prefeences for reviewers to choose what they want to review. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:40, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Okay. In that case, I think what I'll do is post the results of the AfC conversation to the main AfC talk page, and we'll start the process of doing the designing, planning, and prototyping (in concert with the community).  Thank you for working on this. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No need to  thank me Marshall -  I've spent  100s of hours working  on  these very  issues for  many  years. We  are grateful  to  the WMF for  making some steps to  improve the system. It  won't  be enough of course, but  it's a start. Not  doing  anything  at  all  damages the Wikipedia's reputation  for  integrity -  and the WMF should have a vested interest, but  many  employees don't  realise this (speaking  from  experience from  many  real  life discussions with  them). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I updated the project page to summarize the plan for AfC improvements as it now stands, and I also posted it on the AfC talk page. I was thinking that it might be a good idea to also post it for the NPP community, so that NPP reviewers aren't surprised when the New Pages Feed changes.  Is that something you would like to do?  I'm also happy to post if you prefer. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I've just added my comments to your latest progress report. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:31, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

New pages
Hi. Thanks for sorting out the issue with new pages and patrolling, from the thread I started at WP:VPT. Would have replied sooner, but I've been away for a few days. Thanks again!  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 16:43, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
 * you're quite welcome. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and glad everything is back to being in order.  And if you have any opinions or reactions to the project work that caused this bug, please chime in on the talk page!  There will be changes to the New Pages Feed for NPP reviewers, with the addition of ORES scores and copyvio indication. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Improvement
I'm sorry  to  diagree with  you, but  I  am adamant that  Community Wishlist is not the right place to bring up additional improvements to Page Curation and the New Pages Feed. The NPP process is probably  the most  important  core function  of Wikipedia. It's the only firewall  to  prevent unwanted new content and to  encourage  those users who  want  to  submit serious  artilces. It's not something  to  be voted for. For one thing, there are just not  enough  potential  voters to  get it  passed on  the wishlist. Among the 650 so  called reviewers, only  a tiny  fraction  of them have contributed significantly  to  reviewing  new pages or  shown any  interest  in its  further development -  they  don't  even follow these talks. What will  happen,  is that  ultimately  people  will  stop  patrolling  new pages completely if the system is not brought  up  to  requirements. After all these years getting  NPP to  where is now, I  have now already  withdrawn my  engagement  for  improvement; as a volunteer, there comes a time when one just  gets fed up. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Test Wiki Autoconfirm
Hi,

As noted in the AfC project page comments, I was hoping you could tag me as auto-confirmed on the testsite

Nosebagbear (talk) 20:33, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for getting in touch, and I'm glad you want to try things out. We just changed your status to confirmed.  Let me know if it's not working, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of the changes. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Growth team updates #1
Welcome to the first newsletter for the new Growth team!

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.

8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!

We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.

We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.

Share your experiences with newcomers

We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.

'' Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. ''

your recent edit
Hi. with special:diff/863734533, a few comments were accidentally removed. I think it was because of the wikitext editor, but I dont know. I restored your comment, and the lost ones. See you around — usernamekiran (talk)   18:00, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * wow, that's so weird! Thank you for noticing and fixing that. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Bots/Requests for approval/EranBot 3
This has been actioned, please see closing note and advise. — xaosflux  Talk 22:30, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Please let me know when the bot has been added back to the copyvio group.  We would like to make the SWAT at 11 AM PT tomorrow if possible.  With respect to MediaWiki:Pagetriage-welcome, we can change that ourselves, unless you would prefer to do it.  Let me know! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
 * It already has been, should be good to go. Go ahead and update or remove line in the message. —  xaosflux  Talk 01:35, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Community wish list
The poll has closed with  a resounding  success for  the requirements of the New Page Rewiewers. I realise that  the Curation  video  may  be slightly  out  of date and while it's important, it  will be of help  to  the AfC reviewers. It should naturally  be updated, but  this was also  a WMF development  There is a possibility  the volunteer community  could do  it, buit  only  on  a grant  allocation. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:12, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi -- that's a good point about the curation video (I think you're talking about the one on this page).  I agree that it should probably be updated.  One thing that is hopefully helpful is that I added an update to this page about the new features that were added this year.  Maybe after Community Tech works on the feed, it will be a good time to update the video, because I anticipate several more things will change in that process.  Do you know whether new reviewers have found the video useful? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

NPP Improvements
Hey there. You mentioned in the phab ticket that the team is getting ready to start doing NPP soon. That's great. When we had been going through the wishlist process we were told that there might have to be further discussion with the NPP community around what all could be done. Do you or the team have a sense of what form that's going to take yet? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:00, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * good to hear from you. It's actually a different team than my own that will be working on the NPP wishlist item.  It's the Community Tech team, and the product manager is .  I think that team has started to sift through the tasks in the wishlist item and ask clarifying questions in Phabricator, like on this task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T207485.  Maybe  can add some details about the process. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * thanks for the update. can you shed light on the process? Personally I don't find Phab the friendliest of systems and am hoping that I can be a part of the discussion process. I have watch-listed the community page on Meta as you suggested, but would (ideally) hope that this could be done here on -en at WT:NPP/R. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:25, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * , I've found that by keeping an eye on Community_Tech/Page_Curation_and_New_Pages_Feed_improvements and subscribing to all the phab tasks listed there I've been able to get a reasonable idea on what they are working on.
 * , my impression is that you guys are still in the planning phase for a lot of these tasks; is that correct? We would like for NPP to be involved in the planning of some of the tasks ideally (such as the messaging system tasks), so when you guys start work on the messaging system etc., I'd like it if you guys sent some messages to the NPR talk page, similar to how you contacted us for these other two tasks, just to keep everyone in the loop. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    20:51, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi we are about to kick off working on some of the tasks for this project. Keeping an eye on Community Tech/Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements is definitely the best way to keep an eye on updates. I have been asking clarifying questions on the talk page for tickets that require feedback. As we get into more complex tickets, I hope to get more community members involved in the brainstorming discussions on that page. Thanks for reaching out and thanks for the ping, . -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
You might like to move your post from Talk:Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (talk page of an article) to User talk:Rosiestep. Johnuniq (talk) 01:22, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, and .  I should have noticed something didn't seem right when posting!  I've moved the post to the user's talk page. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Query
Hi MMiller! We will likely soon be deciding which introduction page to include on the left sidebar, following up from this RfC. I was wondering if you might be able to find one statistic I am curious to know: what is the average time spent on page for visitors to WP:Contributing to Wikipedia? In other words, how many people who visit that page actually read it, versus get scared away by how long/dense it is? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 17:53, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi -- thank you for getting in touch about this!  It's great to see that you're working to give more newcomers access to editing tools.  The statistic you're asking about is unfortunately not at anyone's fingertips.  It is possible to generate it using the timestamps of when pages have been accessed, but we don't maintain an average dwell time number for all pages.  I agree that it would be exactly the sort of number that could help you decide which page to surface, and if you are willing to wait some weeks for a WMF analyst to become available, it might be possible to find out (though I'm not sure there will be bandwidth).  Setting that aside, I do have some thoughts from the Growth team's research and experience that could help:
 * We have seen in user tests with newcomers that they do indeed wander around the main page looking for a clear place to get started with editing. We believe they are looking for a button or link that explicitly says something like, "Start editing here" or "Get started editing here".
 * I saw that the RfC says that the new link will go under the existing "Help" link in the sidebar. Have you considered re-naming the "Help" link so that it has less ambiguity with this new link that you'll be adding?  I know that Help:Contents covers more kinds of help than just editing help, which is why it would be valuable to keep around.  Maybe something like "General help"?
 * We think that help pages are better when they have a fewer number of links and options -- too many can be overwhelming. In that vein, I think that WP:Contributing to Wikipedia would likely overwhelm, and Help:Introduction would be better.
 * -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's very helpful! I'm not sure where the discussion will be at a few weeks from now, but I'd guess the stat will still be of some use then. The help link on the sidebar didn't receive any direct attention during the recent big sidebar discussion, so I doubt it'll be changed soon, but the tooltip ("guidance on how to use and edit Wikipedia") does give some clarification. And I very much agree about WP:Contributing being overwhelming; hopefully others will come to a similar view. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 02:15, 12 June 2020 (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)

Mentors
Is the program still looking for mentors? I'm trying to find ways to help the encyclopedia and I would love to welcome and assist new members if that is still available. -- A Rose Wolf  17:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The mentor program is currently in trial mode, so there are enough mentors, but once it fully launches, there will be a need for plenty more. For now, the Teahouse always needs more help, so you're welcome to sign up as a host there or just jump in to answering questions! Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:04, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, . I appreciate the timely response. :) -- A Rose Wolf  18:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what to expect
I'm a brand new volunteer mentor and have received a question from a new editor. The only edit he has made is to ask me a question. There is nothing on either his User page or Talk page. I am not sure how to proceed. Please help as I thought this project added introductory info and links for the newcomers to use as a first action. --Oronsay (talk) 06:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi @Oronsay -- thank you for signing up to be a mentor! I see the question on your talk page, and it looks pretty typical.  Most newcomers ask mentor questions from their newcomer homepage, which contains suggested tasks, help links, and their mentor (see image at the right).  We think that different newcomers learn in different ways.  Some like to read documentation, and others prefer to ask questions before they make any edits.Screenshot_of_newcomer_homepage_on_enwiki_2021-08-25.png
 * It looks like the newcomer who asked you a question wants to create a new article -- and may possibly have a conflict of interest around it. I recommend replying right there on your talk page to them, pinging their username so that they are more likely to see your response.  You could thank them for getting started with Wikipedia, explain about how to get started making a new article, perhaps through Articles for Creation, and you could mention something about conflicts of interest and a link to that policy.  I also think it's useful to recommend that they get started with some easy edits by using the feed on their homepage, instead of trying to plunge in with a new article.  Here's a response from @Bilorv in a somewhat similar situation, which might be interesting as a reference.
 * Is this helpful context? Let me know if you have any other questions! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your detailed reply, including the link to Bilorv's interaction. I will do as you suggest. And, yes, if I have more questions I will be back. --Oronsay (talk) 23:18, 17 September 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)

Withdrawing as a mentor
I just wanted to notify you that I have decided to withdraw from the Mentoring project and have removed myself from the list of mentors. I did not feel that I was able to help people as in most cases they were not serious would-be editors. --Oronsay (talk) 00:43, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My second reason, which is of more concern personally, is that I am being spammed. Please see my talk page. This is the second time this new editor has posted there. You can see the earlier post in the page's history. Are you able block this user? Or should I contact an admin?--Oronsay (talk) 19:59, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * @Oronsay, that's a very understandable feeling. The burden of dealing with posts from such users is a lot more acute when they're directed specifically at you, and I would urge the Growth Team to continue exploring ways to ensure that the feature facilitates mentorship and filters out such posts. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 20:30, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, . I'd much rather help people who have made some referenced edits and want to develop their skills, rather than absolute newcomers whose objectives have often been questionable in terms of Wikipedia's guidelines.--Oronsay (talk) 20:33, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

NPP
Hi Marshall,

When we were redesigning the New Pages Feed in 2018, you and I decided on the search criteria for the optional filters to be available for the patrollers. Due to growing abuse by holders of the WP:Autopatrolled right, we now need an additional search criterion:
 * Were created by Autopatrolled users.

. How can we best get this done quickly without an interminable discussion at Phab to justify its need? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:22, 10 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd support that functionality. There's no harm in adding an option, and abuse by autopatrolled users is indeed an issue. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi @Kudpung @Sdkb -- I see now we're finally talking about this over on Barkeep49's talk page. I just wanted to apologize for missing it here. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Typo, or a really cool ability
Hi, in this edit to Growth Team features you posted a number that's current as of December 2022. Either it's a typo (for Dec 2021 or Jan 2022 or even Feb 2022) or else you have an awesome superpower! Best, --bonadea contributions talk 07:14, 4 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out @Bonadea -- it was actually fixed by User:GhostInTheMachine even before I could get to it. Yes, I meant 2021!  While we're talking, I'm interested to hear any of your thoughts or reactions to the Growth features (I know we also have another thread going about potential harassment through mentorship).  Thank you! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Congrats
Just thought I'd drop in a congrats as you'd indicated you'd taken on a more senior position. Having someone who has been "walking the walk" at community involvement and consultation be overseeing more teams can only be a positive.

Yours,

Nosebagbear (talk) 12:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you, @Nosebagbear! Working with our communities is the most special and unique part of being a product manager at WMF, and we're all continually inspired by the dedication of our unpaid volunteers.  Here's to the interesting projects of the future! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 4 February 2022 (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)

Question from Cloud atlas (23:31, 5 May 2022)
How do I add a picture? --Cloud atlas (talk) 23:31, 5 May 2022 (UTC)


 * @Cloud atlas Was this a demo/test question? I noticed you're signed up as a mentor and have already helped people, so it rather surprised me when I saw it. Marshall is really too busy with WMF work, and not the right person to be asking such specific questions to if it wasn't a test. If you need guidance, either drop by my talk page and be specific about what you actually want to achieve, or feel free to ask at the Teahouse, or visit How to upload a photo. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi @Nick Moyes -- thanks for noticing this and reacting! "Cloud atlas" is my own personal account, and I was demoing mentorship for a colleague since I have claimed my personal account as a mentee from my work account.  I should have removed it afterward so that the wiki doesn't continue to have demo content lying around (I'll remove it now).  I'm sorry for the confusion, and thank you for always being willing to welcome new people! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @MMiller (WMF) Doh! I'd not noticed that. It did seem odd. (I was just working through this filtered list to check for any old, unanswered questions that maybe people were away on holiday and couldn't answer).
 * Now it's been answered, why not leave it there lest someone equally as dim as me doesn't notice the connection? LOL. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:29, 17 May 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)

NPP
Hi, Marshall. I was so enthralled at the time, collaborating with you when you were heading up the enhancements to PageTriage a few years ago, it made me, an unpaid volunteer believe I was doing some good for the world's greatest fount of knowledge. I cannot begin to voice my disappointment therefore in the way your reply to the NPP letter was left in a newspaper readers' comments section rather than formally and in an encouraging tone to the right people in the correct place. We can understand the Foundation's embarrassment at such an exposé, but the facts have spoken for themselves. The volunteers are the Foundation's only real asset. If many more maintenance editors were to burn out and abandon their tasks, the WMF's flagship project would soon be in a very sorry state without its free workforce to keep the content respectable. The workload is too much for the NPP volunteers, they can no longer cope with the depressing new content that arrives in a daily stream, and the system is bordering on a meltdown. It's time to start thinking outside the box like Erik Möller and Brandon Harris did in 2011.

NPP is only one half of the problem, the other excellent solution was abandoned some years ago when its senior developer left the WMF, so I sincerely do look very much towards NPP working with you again on the same friendly and collegial basis as we did before, and as equals and on the same side. The NPP team is expecting a personal committment from the CEO and the CPTO and then I hope to have an opportunity to discuss these issues and future solutions with you and your new designated team personally very soon together with the NPP spokespeople, rather than receive a third prepared message that wards off any direct dialogue. Best, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:44, 1 October 2022 (UTC)..


 * Hi @Kudpung -- thanks for checking out my reply. I'm glad you had such a good experience with our collaboration.  I agree that we got a lot of important work done!  I know you are looking for a reply directly from the CEO and CPTO, but do you think I should cross-post my reply on the talk page of the open letter itself, both on English Wikipedia and on Meta?
 * Regarding direct dialogue, would you be interested in participating in the meeting I bring up in my message?
 * Also, I just wanted to make sure I understood a couple things you said. What was the out-of-the-box thinking from Erik Möller and Brandon Harris that you mentioned?  Also, what was the excellent solution you said was abandoned?  And what is the new kind of junk you mentioned over on the signpost discussion?  Thank you, and let me know! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for such a quick reply Marshall. I'll answer your points one-by-one. First off however, I really think you should copy your statement in the readers' comments section of The Signpost the the correct page at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination/2022 WMF letter. The instructions in the emails we sent and at meta were quite clear about that (or so we thought). That's the page 444 editors are hunched over, eagerly waiting for something to come in. What they are expecting there however, are at least a couple of short words  of reassurance from both Ms Iskander and Ms Denkelmann, but despite your new found seniority, it's our guess you are still to low in the pecking order to have even been accorded access to the CEO's  Oval Office. Of course I may be wrong and I hope I am, but one thing is sure: the top people have not met all 550 WMF employees. There were 7 employees when I joined Wikipedia, nowadays even the senior staff don't know who's who and who does what. It's not only the Wikipedia volunteers who don't know whom to address.


 * I highly recommend you continue to follow the developments at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-09-30/In focus because other users not involvolved in the NPP action but who are nevertheless influential Wikipedians are now also speaking out.


 * Erik's out-of-the-box idea was to completely redraw the entire NPP system (which we now have) to replace the very primitive thing we had which for historical reasons is still available at Special:NewPages and the cumbersome use of Twinkle. In private Skpe-ups with him and his developer, we worked together on it, but it is nevertheless strictly a WMF project - for one thing, I don't have a clue about computer code (my postgraduate research was on linguistics and media, long before even desktop top computers became available). Unfortunatey, the code base is no longer compatible with later iterations of MediaWiki (or so we are told) and that's onje of their excuses for not doing anything.


 * The other half of the equation that was abandoned, was to further regulate the flow of unsuitable new articles without damaging the 'Anyone can edit' meme. Brandon began a system based loosely on an idea of mine and produced a set of excellent wireframes for it, but he later got disenchanted with the WMF (as many senior staff and devs did in 2015) and left in that mass exodus. His project was subsequently neatly swept under the carpet and people like yourself are probably not aware of some of those older great ideas. He was a true inspiration to the WMF and he was a genuine UX expert. Wikipedia has a lot to thank him for all his software developments and his exit has never been replaced. Instead, the WMF's Growth team (of which the Wishlist is part) is spending vast sums on systems for onboarding new mobile device users. It might work, but it will ultimately make the NPP system only worse.


 * The kind of junk I mentioned comes mainly from mobile phone users. The exponential growth in Internet reach in developing economies and the availability of cheap smart phones (every child in a rice field has one) has turned the Wikipedia into an English language encyclopedia for non-English speaking regions. and a MMORPG for te others. This has been reported by the BBC and other media. These are the new challenges the reviewers are faced with and which have overturned the advantages gained by ACTRIAL.


 * There's only one solution and one which must come first: employ more developers - or more strictly, code writers who will work to predefined tasks and not go off and be creative; but that's probably something you have no influence in. They should then take their instructions from the community via whoever in the WMF is responsible for that section. Let's never forget that among the Wikipedia volunteers there are many people just as qualified as the WMF devs and their managers, if not more so.  We need to collaborate to accumulate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:34, 2 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Sorry, there's one point I forgot to mention: Yes, I would indeed most welcome the opportiuity to discuss all these points with you in a live meeting. This is something we should do quite quickly  (if you have your bosses' approval) just to establish the  future discussion points, the lines of responsibility, and who should represent whom. this would ensure that we are at least singing from the same page - despite my being very critical, I really would like to help narrow this great divide between the WMF and the volunteers. BTY, you have mail. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:15, 2 October 2022 (UTC).
 * Thanks for the additional info, @Kudpung, and I did see your email. I posted my reply on the talk page of the letter like you recommended.  Okay, so I think we're set up to continue the conversation, and we'll let you know more info on that meeting I mentioned. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks Marshall. I have replied at the talk page of the letter where all future discussion should take place, and we can take it from there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Roadmap and org chart for IT teams involved with WP
Hi, I read your discussion with interest with @Kudpung. Is there a roadmap and org chart/phab groip for Wikipedia dev? Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 14:15, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
 * , I can answer this for you. The information you want is available at: Wikimedia Foundation Staff & Contractors. You can navigate around that site for additional information. Individual staff will not generally disclose further details. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Kudpung Thank-you. Unfortunately, I was advised that that website is out of date. Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 21:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
 * , Some of it, yes. No one even knows whose responsibility it is. Not being hosted in Germany. the law doesn't require them to provide an impressum. You could try asking here. 21:59, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

NPP
Hi Marshall, just dropping in to remind again that there has been no news from you for a while either here, or at the main discussion page at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination/2022 WMF letter. We were wondering if you are getting notifications from pings in messages that are for your attention. . Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:09, 14 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi @Kudpung -- thanks for pinging me. I just responded to you at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination/2022 WMF letter.  I am definitely getting pings, and I'm sorry it took me a few days to get back to you. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)


 * HI, . As you already know all the people from the en.Wikipedia who will be attending, we think it would be helpful if you would tell who will be attending from the WMF and from other Wikimedia projects. It would help us to formulate our part of the discussion to the benefit of the others who are not familiar with NPP. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:11, 30 October 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. '' 20:57, 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)

Update on the user survey
On the 14th of February, OVasileva said the WMF were looking into publishing the results of user survey in response to our request and would update us when you know more. Do you have an update for us? BilledMammal (talk) 15:47, 3 March 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)

A solstice greeting
 ❄️Happy holidays!❄️

Hi Marshall! I'd like to wish you a splendid solstice season as we wrap up the year. Here is an artwork, made individually for you, to celebrate. It was great to see you in Toronto, and looking forward to more collaborations in the coming year! Take care, and thanks for all you do to make Wikipedia better!Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb }&#125;  talk

&#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 06:47, 24 December 2023 (UTC)


 * @Sdkb -- thank you for the holiday artwork and for being a source of ideas and energy in our community. Here's to a year of forward progress! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2024 (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)