Wikipedia:Snuggle



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Snuggle is a discontinued, browser-based newcomer observation and support system. Snuggle was designed to allow Wikipedian mentors to observe the activities of recently registered editors and separate good newcomers (good-faith and productive) from the bad ones (bad-faith and vandals).

This tool was designed in response to a 2009 study that demonstrated a decline in newcomer retention in Wikipedia due to an increasingly negative environment for desirable newcomers and that Wikipedia's current socialization systems doesn't work because mentors don't find newcomers when they most need help. Snuggle was designed to help experienced Wikipedians identify desirable newcomers who are editing in good faith and help them dodge Wikipedia's sharper corners.

User interface

 * Further information: http://tools.wmflabs.org/videotutorials/Snuggle/

Snuggle's user interface runs entirely within a browser window. A user browser provides a list of newcomers, with an interactive visualization of their activities over time (see Figure 3) and a summary of messages that have been posted on the newcomers' user talk pages. Using Snuggle, you can quickly review the activities of a list of recent newly registered user accounts and sort them into good-faith newcomers who should be supported and bad-faith newcomers who ought to be ignored or sent to WP:AIV. You can also perform some relevant actions that affect the wiki such as sending a message, posting an invitation to the WP:Teahouse or reporting the user to WP:AIV (see Figure 2).

 A : Tabs allow access to lists of newcomers: unsorted, good-faith, ambiguous and bad-faith. See D. B : Talk page summary. Header text is displayed with an icon describing the content. From the figure to the right:
 * W = welcome template
 * csd = Criteria for speedy deletion
 * V 1 = Vandalism warning (level 1)
 * del = Article proposed for deletion
 *  = non-templated discussion
 *  = non-templated discussion

C : Newcomer metadata -- data and statistics about this user. D : Categorization systems allows you to mark newcomers as "good-faith", "ambiguous" or "bad-faith". E : Column of usernames. F : Interactive plot of user contributions. See Figure 3. G : Talk page icons. See B. Figure 1: The Snuggle user-interface with relevant components called out.

Development
 

Snuggle is 100% free, open-source software, the source code is available under the MIT license. It's built on top of a python-based server back-end with an HTML/Javascript/CSS front-end. You can find the repository and issue tracker on GitHub.

Status updates

 * 2012-09-15: HTML mockup of UI produced
 * 2012-10-02: Synchronizer tracking recentchanges on English Wikipedia
 * 2012-12-01: Newcomer desirability prediction system proof of concept based on scores generated by WP:STiki.
 * 2012-01-02: Integration with Wikipedia's authentication system
 * 2013-01-03: User action menu released
 * 2013-01-04: IRC demo & feedback session at 1700 UTC/11AM CST in #wikimedia-office
 * 2013-01-10: Demonstration to the Wikimedia Foundation
 * 2013-03-07: User actions menu implemented
 * 2013-04-25: Intelligent newcomer desirability ranking algorithm
 * 2013-05-02: Configuration overhaul. Preliminary multi-lingual support.
 * 2013-05-10: API support for synchronization.
 * 2013-05-25: Configurable user actions
 * 2013-05-27: i18n support added
 * 2013-05-31: 1.0rc1 released on the WMF labs cluster http://snuggle.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org
 * 2013-06-06: New instance set at http://snuggle.grouplens.org
 * 2013-06-10: Welcome screen with recent activity
 * 2013-06-12: Version 1.1 released
 * 2013-06-14: Sign-up list notified of release. Snuggle is officially live!

Road map
See also issue and feature tracking.


 * 2013-07-17: IRC mentor discussion in at 1600 UTC;
 * August 9th: Present @ Wikimania in Hong Kong
 * September 18th: Full project report to be published on meta

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