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Missing mentor?

Hi Growth team. As reported over on WP:VPR, Asilvering has the homepage enabled; they have a mentor relationship that appears to be with User:Elli - however on their homepage they don't get the "Your Mentor" section at all (but do get the rest of the page). What should be checked next? — xaosflux Talk 18:51, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's what it looks like, if this helps. -- asilvering (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
@Martin Urbanec (WMF) - any hints? — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
Or @MMiller (WMF) ? — xaosflux Talk 15:11, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
@Asilvering could you try this:
  1. Follow this link: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=query&format=json&meta=userinfo&uiprop=options>
  2. Look on the left side and make sure the "action" says "query" (so I'm not trying to trick you to change something!)
  3. Click "Make request" on the top right
  4. Look for these lines, and report back the values:
    1. growthexperiments-homepage-enable
    2. growthexperiments-homepage-mentorship-enabled
Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 15:29, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
@xaosflux I've got a 1 for the first and a 0 for the second. So it seems that all new users are being assigned mentors, but only some of us are being told about this? That's weird and creepy if I'm showing up in "my mentor's" mentorship dashboard, but if I'm not, I suppose it's just an easier way to code the feature and doesn't really matter either way. Though it may cause confusion like our "I don't have a mentor" "yes you do, here!" "?!?!?????" conversation periodically. Looks like I'm also not in these either, in case you're curious:
  • growthexperiments-tour-help-panel
  • growthexperiments-tour-homepage-mentorship
both 0. I am pretty sure what the top one there refers to is something I was able to turn off myself. But to test this, I went and enabled it again (Preferences --> Editor --> "Enable the editor help panel"), but when I did that and ran the query again, growthexperiments-tour-help-panel still has a 0 value. Not sure what's going on there. -- asilvering (talk) 19:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
@Asilvering I set and reset your mentor, can you see if the panel appears now? I wonder if "getting claimed" activates that, even if you are not a new user. Need one of those WMF guys on the coding side to help points us tot he right directions here! — xaosflux Talk 19:18, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
@xaosflux I got a notification that you were my new mentor, then one that Elli was, but that alone hasn't enabled the panel. I don't know if there's some special way to purge the homepage in particular, but a regular shift+refresh and clearing cache had no effect - still no panel. I went back through my notifications history and confirmed that I never got a notification telling me that Elli was my mentor when I first made an account here, but Elli IS the editor who reviewed my userpage, which suggests that Elli did know that I'd been assigned as their mentee. -- asilvering (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
  • OK So, need reply from the Growth Team - seems like a couple of conditions about not having a way to flip mentorship:on; (a) Claiming a user (e.g. if you are at an editathon) doesn't mean you will actually be able to use the tools (b) If you want to use the tools as a mentee, you can't unless this is done on the back end. So how to deal with this, not sure. First, is there any existing mechanism that will toggle that on - if so what? Second, if it is off, should a setmentor or claimmentee action trigger it on? Do we need some new phab tasks or is this already being considered? — xaosflux Talk 01:31, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
    Everyone has a mentor, but not everyone sees it.
    @Asilvering, when you created your account 3 months ago, did you get the Growth features immediately, or did you turn them on manually in your preferences?
    If you had access to the features immediately, then it means that you aren't part of the 5% who see the mentorship module. If you had to turn them on, I will have to dig a bit further. :)
    Thank you for your reply, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Trizek (WMF): For example, I have a VERY old account, but somehow my mentorship is enabled. Not sure if I was part of some manual pilot. I suppose what we need is a way to turn on mentorship features for existing users, perhaps multiple ways: user opts-in somehow, something can trigger it (like being claimed), or something restricted (like setmentor) could trigger it. The first is likely related to phab:T287915 - but perhaps this isn't limited to "newcomers" as someone with an aged account could still be new, or could still have a use for this feature. — xaosflux Talk 18:10, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Trizek (WMF) I had access to the features immediately. I had already concluded that I was not part of the 5% with the mentorship module, but I thought that meant I didn't have a mentor, not that I had been assigned one silently... this is extremely creepy. In the Village Pump thread you'll see @Andrew Davidson bringing up similar concerns about giving people control over this. I strongly urge you to consider making this opt-in only. This mentorship feature is clearly designed with retaining new editors in mind, but I think forcing people into it (or (worse?) adding them to it halfway and not saying anything about it) may well negatively impact the kinds of editors Wikipedia is already struggling to attract and retain. Meatspace comparison: it's helpful and comforting to have someone you can call on to look over your shoulder when you need help at the hackathon; it's super unwelcome and anxiety-provoking when someone is walking by and just stops behind your chair, looming. Certain groups of people are used to experiencing that second one off wiki. They're primed to feel it here, too. -- asilvering (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Asilvering without being "enabled" - not sure it it will even work; I just manually claimed you just to test this. Will wait for the update and let you know if you show up on my Special:MentorDashboard. — xaosflux Talk 18:32, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    You might be able to opt-in with the growthsetmenteestatus api call, but lets not try that yet. — xaosflux Talk 18:34, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    The default behavior of our features is to provide a mentor to everyone. Consequently, we have a table with all mentor/mentees relationship, where you will find any created account assigned to one of the volunteers mentors. It is populated as far as new accounts are created. Any mentor can claim anyone from this table; I understand that if could lead to some confusion for a user who is "claimed" without understanding why, because of the lack of context.
    This being said, please keep in mind that English Wikipedia are in a very specific situation there. At your wiki, only 5% of users see the mentorship module. You are the only wiki having this limitation. It is a temporary tweak to the default behavior of our features. We made it so that your community can test mentorship without the optimal number of mentors (as of today, you are at 81/220), and without pressure from thousands of mentees asking questions en masse.
    Users in this 5% group know that they have a mentor, since they see the mentorship module at their homepage. The remaining 95% have no clue of their mentor, which was the case of Asilvering (until they came to the discussions and turned the features on, I guess).
    The end goal is to provide a mentor to 100% of users, so that everyone will have an equal opportunity to be helped. So the objective is to move from 5% of users seeing the module to 100%. It is up to your community to increase this number.
    @Asilvering, are you suggesting that we should let mentees opting-in mentorship? If so, aren't you afraid to have people being too shy to ask for help? Meatspace comparison as well: I see people at hackathons who aren't productive or are blocked in their projects because they are too shy and unwilling to ask for help because they don't want to disturb others. This being said, I totally got your point as being spied over my shoulder is not something I like to experience. We are working on mentees opting-out to resolve this "stalking" effect. It would mean that their username would be removed from the database. They will have to opt-in mentorship if they want to rejoin. But we prefer to provide a mentor to everyone as we think it is the best way to achieve fairness.
    Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Asilvering - even after a dashboard update, I do not see you as my mentee (as your mentorship feature is off) - so even though I'm "assigned" to you, since the feature is off for you the relationship is not being used. I can keep you for testing, or if you want I can put you back to Elli (let me know if you want to be put back). Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 19:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    If you really want to see what it looks like, seems like you can self opt-in using the API. Click this link, Click "action=growthsetmenteestatus" in the left panel, Click Auto-fill the token in the right panel, then Click "Make request" in the top right. This is certainly not something we would expect normal users to do. — xaosflux Talk 19:30, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    (I put you back to Elli as well). — xaosflux Talk 19:31, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @xaosflux Ok, that's comforting, but I'm still really wondering how @Elli just happened upon me in the first place if I wasn't showing up on a list of mentees or something? I suppose it could be coincidence... but that's odd. -- asilvering (talk) 19:51, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    I think there was a one-time back-end job to associate everyone with a mentor just so there wouldn't be nulls in the table (someone from Growth team will need to verify). This does mean that there is a huge mapping of existing users to the relatively small number of mentors (even though almost all of them are "disabled" (effectively opted out). — xaosflux Talk 19:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Asilvering: honestly, I don't remember. I mark pretty much every non-spammy userpage I see as reviewed so I could've seen it in a manner unrelated to you being my mentee. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:31, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Elli If you're frequently reviewing userpages, it's surely more likely that you came across mine that way. -- asilvering (talk) 20:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Trizek (WMF) I see your point about people being too shy to ask for help, but I think the negative effects of people being too shy to help are probably less bad than the negative effects of people feeling creeped out? It's not just AD I have seen/heard talking about how new users spook easily. (Anecdotally, I also remember feeling freaked out by something someone posted on my talk page many many years ago when I made some IP edit or other, and I stopped editing completely for a time because of it - but I don't remember enough about that to be useful.) I also think it's probably easier to make the "click here to be assigned a mentor!" option look more inviting than it is to make an "opt out of having a mentor here!" button that doesn't look like a downer. But all that is stuff that can be A/B tested? -- asilvering (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    I think of it as how every college/university student gets assigned an advisor, but may never meet or otherwise engage with them: it's just an available resource that the student can make use of as they see fit. In a similar manner, editors have complete control over what type of engagement they want to have with their mentors: they basically serve as an optional contact point for help. I think giving all new editors an initial starting point to form a network, should they choose to do so, is valuable. isaacl (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl I found that relationship deeply weird and unwelcome as well! -- asilvering (talk) 22:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    (Breaking away from the metaphor in order to avoid a long digression...) English Wikipedia has a lot of different processes which can be overwhelming. I think it can be helpful to let users know here's an individual to whom you can ask questions, only if you want to. isaacl (talk) 23:11, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, the "only if you want to" is quite key to what I am saying. -- asilvering (talk) 00:27, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
    Sure; I feel this message should be given in conjunction with welcoming editors with an offer of assistance. isaacl (talk) 00:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
    Hello @Xaosflux, thanks for the ping. I see this particular issue was resolved by experimenting (please do feel free to correct me if not). I'd like to clarify how mentorship currently works.
    As of now, at English Wikipedia, 25% of users have Growth features, and 5% of users also have mentorship features. A mentor is, however, assigned to everyone, to ensure #mentor magic word works and can be reliably used in (welcome) templates and similar (the idea of integrating Growth mentorship is covered by MediaWiki.org). Currently, apart from the action=growthsetmenteestatus API call @Xaosflux discovered, it's not possible to enable mentorship after registration. Once phab:T287915 is done, users will be able to opt out from mentorship and opt back in. Completing that task would make it easy to let mentorship start as opt out (instead of disabled) via phab:T301456, letting anyone to turn it on if so desired.
    The Special:ClaimMentee feature (or the API) intentionally doesn't enable Growth or mentorship features. Purpose of those functionalities is to only change the mentor, not "preparing" accounts with Growth features for others. We can consider changing that (or creating other tooling to help with that), but in my opinion, we should be very careful when letting someone else to change one's preferences – that has a great chance of causing issues.
    Please feel free to let me know if you have any other questions, Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Martin Urbanec (WMF) Thanks for the update! If ones opt-in/opt-out/disabled preference doesn't need to be secret, I think it may be a good idea to have the ClaimMentee action report back if the target has mentorship disabled - so the claimer knows that while the claim is successful, it won't be usable. — xaosflux Talk 18:24, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
    Good idea! Documented at phab:T302898, so it can be looked at later. Best, Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Possibility of ignoring user talk page protection

Hello! So I just thought of an issue with this. Some mentor's will have their talk pages temporarily semi-protected due to persistent vandalism. The issue comes with them being a mentor. Because their user talk page is protected, new users won't be able to ask their mentors any questions because they probably won't be autoconfirmed yet. Would it be possible for questions that come from the mentorship module (aka New User Homepage) to bypass any protection on the talk page? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I think I'd rather see it post to their own talk pages, with a ping to the mentor. — xaosflux Talk 18:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I'm not quite understanding the logic behind that. They are asking their mentor a question so it would logically make sense to post to their mentor's talk page and not their own. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:05, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
I'm thinking more of as a failback; but really if you want to be someone that works with brand-new users, you need to not have your page protected, say you reply - "most" people are going to reply on their own page, with a ping - OK - but then what - the mentee still won't be able to to continue the conversation naturally (by replying on that talk page). — xaosflux Talk 18:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
I would say that maybe the sections that are created as questions from mentees would completely ignore the page's protection, however I don't think that is possible. Maybe a way for a mentor to set where the questions from mentees would go to? Not having the talk page protected isn't always possible since sometimes vandals like disturbing your own talk page and protection is the only option. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:13, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
There will shortly be a feature where a mentor can switch their current activity to "away", and any mentees that they have will temporarily be redirected to another mentor until they return. I think this problem was brought up in the past from what I remember, and we planned on using this feature for this rare case. Panini! • 🥪 18:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
That doesn't really address the issue. If a mentor's talk page is temporarily protected due to vandalism and their still active, setting their activity to "away" might be a bit misleading as the issue is simply that their talk page is protected and not that they aren't available. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:18, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Oh, let me clarify; this feature I'm referring to isn't the same one as the away feature, rather a similar one. In this case, the mentee will get a notification saying they've been assigned a new mentor, and they can read more when clicking on it. Panini! • 🥪 18:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Again not directly addressing the problem. If a mentor's talk page is protected, I don't think the right solution would just be to assign all of that mentor's mentees a new mentor. I think instead the mentor should be able to set where the questions will be asked so they can have a temporary unprotected talk page set up so questions can still be asked, but vandalism won't be an issue. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf -- thanks for bringing this up and anticipating this issue. This is, indeed, an issue that has happened on other Wikipedias. @Martin Urbanec (WMF) from the Growth team has worked on solutions here and can fill us in. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Hello @Blaze Wolf and others, thank you for thinking about the mentorship feature – I appreciate that. I'm curious about current English Wikipedia's practice on talk page protection – is it likely mentors' talk pages get permanently protected?
As part of phab:T244258, I think about a different solution to the one you suggested: instead of bypassing protection entirely, I think the mentorship module should treat the mentor as unavailable and temporarily redirect mentor's questions to a different mentor. This is similar to what @Panini! suggested above in this thread. You can see an early draft of the feature on the mentee's side as well.
Personally, I don't think the "bypass protection" solution is a good idea, because sooner or later, there likely will be malicious actors abusing the "bypass protection" functionality. Today, it might not be a significant issue (as a mentor is assigned to you randomly), but this might become a bigger issue if we allow mentees to select or change their mentor in the future (for example, by implementing phab:T292068). I'd be curious to hear what you think about this risk – maybe it's not as important as I think about it now.
For the "Redirect the questions to a different unprotected page of mentor's choice" idea, that's something I never thought about. I'm not sure about the potential to confuse newcomers this has (as it'd be two pages receiving their question rather than a single one). Maybe redirecting questions to a different mentor temporarily would be easier to explain to the mentees? In any way, I'll keep this idea in my mind for the future. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@Martin Urbanec (WMF): Hello Martin! I don't like the idea of temporarily redirecting questions to a different mentor because that might confuse the mentee when they see that they're asking questions to Person A but their being sent to the talk page of Person B. To my knowledge, mentor talk pages don't usually get permanently protected since they usually don't need to be permanently protected. However, on the odd chance that it does happen maybe my idea would be better in that case? Because I don't think it would be fair for a mentor to permanently lose out on the ability to be a mentor just because their talk page needs to be permanently protected due to persistent vandalism and harassment. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:31, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Hello @Blaze Wolf! Thanks for the reply. I'm wondering, do you think both the away feature (which looks like phab:F34971123 on the mentee's side) and the hypothetical redirecting feature for mentors with protected talk pages (which can look like phab:F31551979 for the mentee) are potentially confusing for the new users? If so, I'm curious why. Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 12:23, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
We are very cautious regarding talk-page protection; afaik, it's exceedingly rare for a user talk-page to be permanently protected, and if so, they/someone often create an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good-faith comments from users that the protection restricts editing from. Lectonar (talk) 12:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
@Martin Urbanec (WMF): Those do make it a bit clearer what's going on compared to what I was thinking. However if the mentee sees that their mentor who is unavailable/away is still editing, they might be confused as to why it says they are way and possibly report it as a bug. (Also Phab is finally working again for me! Yay!) ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:00, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
In my view, someone who has their talk page protected indefinitely or on a regular basis should not be a mentor, not because of personal failings but because if they are subject to some harassment or malicious activity that requires talk page protection then the mentor feature is going to be an attack vector (whatever page the questions go to). In rare cases, someone's talk page may be protected temporarily as a one-off (perhaps even without their agreement), and in these cases I think a mentor should just be marked as "away". — Bilorv (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Now at 100% / 10%

Hi everyone -- today, we started giving the Growth features to 100% of new accounts, with 10% receiving mentorship (based on the RfC which closed last week). So we should expect to see 4 times as many suggested edits and twice as many mentor questions as we had been seeing. We'll be keeping our eyes on the numbers. Thank you all for helping us get to this important point: the Growth features are now the default newcomer experience on English Wikipedia!

In terms of next steps, our team is going to be thinking about whether/how we should make the features available to all the other accounts that were created in the past. Perhaps there are "newish" users who would find value in the Growth features, and perhaps even experienced users would like to do suggested edits, see their impact, or at least be able to browse the Growth features just to see them. We're thinking about these "all the other accounts" in two groups:

  • There are the newcomers who created accounts in the past several months, or those who created accounts that have not edited very much (perhaps under 500 edits). Maybe we could turn the Growth features on for these accounts with a notification like, "New features available, etc!"
  • There are older accounts or those that have many edits. These people likely do not need the newcomer features. Perhaps we could turn the "Homepage" tab on for them, but not notify, announce, or disrupt their experience in any other way. They could just choose not to visit the homepage tab, and then would not bump into the Growth features. That said, they may be confused when encountering this very newcomer-focused feature (e.g. "Try some suggested edits to get started"). In the farther future, it would be great to have a version of the homepage geared toward more experienced users, but for now the team will remain focused on new users.

This next step of turning the Growth features on for "all other accounts" would not be happening imminently, and we would try it on other Wikipedias first. But if anyone here has thoughts on whether or how to do this, I would like to hear! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF) at least for "older accounts" - can the features be enabled, but just not opted-in? That way if they want them, they can turn them on in preferences? — xaosflux Talk 23:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux -- yes, that capability is actually the status quo! There are preferences for the Growth features under the "User profile" tab and under the "Editing" tab, which anyone can flip on now (there are currently three checkboxes total, but we have plans to combine them into one). Are you saying that you recommend we don't turn it on for the "older accounts", and let the existence of the preferences be sufficient?
And what about the "newish" users -- do you think that turning it on for them with some kind of notification is a good idea? What cutoff would you use to define those users? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
@MMiller (WMF) I do see the 2 options in user profile (growthexperiments-homepage-enable, growthexperiments-homepage-pt-link); however I do not see anything that can help toggle growthexperiments-homepage-mentorship-enabled to allow them to make use of their mentor, this is what I was referring to. I don't think we should force on those first 2 options for "older accounts" at all. I don't think we should enable *-pt-link for the existing users, especially not if they have already initiated their userpage. As far as force enabling *-homepage-enable: should be safe for anyone that isn't autoconfirmed, would need feedback from others if it should be higher. — xaosflux Talk 01:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
Glad to see the 100%/10% is live! I'd say rolling the features out to anyone on en.wiki who created an account in the last six months [counted from the day the features are made retroactive] would be reasonable, if you think this is worth your while (if it's going to take e.g. three months to plan and trial on other Wikipedias and another month to get support here, is the expected benefit worth that work?). I think having the status quo, where anybody older can opt-in if they want to see what it looks like, is fine as is for anyone older than six months. — Bilorv (talk) 20:44, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

My mentor experience as of 15 March

  • As of 15 March, assigned 52 mentees
  • 27 made one or more edits (all sent Welcome to their Talk)
  • 3 have made 10 or more edits
  • 3 attempts at autobiography or website-like content
  • 1 asked a question
  • 1 blocked as sock
  • Only 1 posted anything on User page, despite being instructed how to
  • If posts reverted by me or other editors, I left an explanation why
Curious to see how this turns out. David notMD (talk) 14:15, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Userbox

Since we dont have any colors or a logo I kept the userbox pretty simple. Please let me know here if you have any suggestions I should make to the userbox to make it better. The template code is this {{Growth Team features mentor}}, and here is what it looks like. {{Growth Team features mentor}} [nowikied by CX Zoom]

― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 22:30, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, just wanted to let everyone know that I moved {{Growth Team features mentor}} to {{User Growth Team features mentor}} per Wikipedia:WikiProject Userboxes § Guide to moving userboxes & Wikipedia:Userboxes § Namespace. The appearance of the template remains the same, see
This user is a Mentor for new editors at the Wikipedia Growth Team.


---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 13:14, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 13:56, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Nice! See also {{User mentor}}. This adds Category:Wikipedians who mentor new users to your userpage. Details here.
Help Desk
This user is a Mentor to new editors
see: Homepage features

Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:51, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not fond of the wording "for the Growth Team features"—it sounds like the mentor can help you with the growth team features. Plus, the phrase isn't very meaningful to anyone who doesn't already know to what it refers. isaacl (talk) 23:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
 Done, and I added the categories. I was in a rush so I didn't put in any yet. ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 01:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Cool idea to make a userbox, @Kaleeb18! I just wanted to point out that Arabic Wikipedia has a userbox for this in which they use the logo of the Growth team, which is a "W" with a pencil sprouting leaves. You can see it on this mentor's userpage: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%AF%D9%85:Dyolf77 MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Similar boxes are listed on d:Q109498957. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@MMiller (WMF): Thank you I will put that logo in now. ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 18:12, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Do y’all think it should say "at the Growth Team features" or just "at Growth Team features"? ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 18:15, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Or what do y’all think the wording should be in general ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 18:17, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
I think it should just say something like:
This user is a Mentor.
The wikilink can explain what it is for anyone that doesn't know. That being said, these can be forked as much as wanted, so don't care to much. — xaosflux Talk 18:23, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
IDK as mentor could stand for anything if they dont look at the link. ― Kaleeb18TalkCaleb 04:06, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
@Kaleeb18 Yup, just like for anyone who doesn't know that the terms are looking at other user role boxes: {{User rollbacker}}, {{User wikipedia/Edit filter manager}}, or {{User wikipedia/Oversighter}}. Just for reference, feel free to make all the userboxes you like :D — xaosflux Talk 11:48, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Mentorship scheme - logo possibilities

I'd like to raise the issue of finding and deploying a suitable logo to identify the mentorship element of Growth Team Features. You might see this as trivial, but I'm currently reworking the Adopt-a-user page, and needed to refer to the new mentorship scheme with an identifiable image that sums up what it does.

I've found four possibilities so far, and have deployed no. 1) at WP:AAU for now, as it seems the strongest and simplest. Despite its title, the file is not actually used at WP:RETENTION. No 2) seems too obscure and high-brow; 3) would need to be redone in English, and 4) seems pretty good, but doesn't quite encapsulate the 1-2-1 element of support (though it could be seen as a random selection of new users, all needing a mentor!).

Further additions: 5) Sums up the Q&A nature of mentorship; 6) is the logo for the Growth Team features, but does not sum up the element of the mentor/mentee relationship.

Logo ideas for the 'mentorship' element of Growth Team Features


I feel happy to use 1) to refer to mentorship, but wanted to seek input and ideas from other editors. Nick Moyes (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

We replaced the logo at WP:RETENTION since the old one wasn't racially inclusive. If there's going to be logo for this, I'd prefer it either be something new designed by the WMF, or we could just decide that mentorship falls under WikiProject Retention and use that project's really nice new logo. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:33, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Though I can see the argument for it, personally I wouldn't consider the mentorship program as being a part of the editor retention project, as it wasn't involved in its creation or development. isaacl (talk) 03:35, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough. Right now, WikiProject Retention is kinda just a hollow shell—their only remaining significant activity is Editor of the Week. But the welcoming committee, the help project, the department of fun, and the Teahouse could all theoretically be seen as units of the parent retention project. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:44, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
The editor retention project was created as a place for editors to discuss their ideas on matters related to editor retention. Editor of the Week is a subpage of the project page because it was directly created by various project participants (including me). The project wasn't created to be an umbrella location to discuss all initiatives related to editor retention. If those involved in any initiative want to associate it with the editor retention project, they are of course free to do so. I just don't want anyone thinking that the project is setting itself up as some kind of overarching project or discussion forum. isaacl (talk) 04:16, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
One thing I'm not a fan of is how all of these logos are overly complex, although this may be that "simplify the logo" thought every company is getting nowadays and nobody actually has a problem with the ones listed above. After all, with an entirely new feature coming our way, why not tread unknown waters a bit more? With that, I took to Canva; I spent a (shameful) hour experimenting with possible logo designs, such as if and how I would incorporate elements of the above suggestions. In the end, I decided to incorporate the 1-on-1 user interaction (as seen in 2, 3, and 4), the helping hands (1 and 3), and the emphasis of the "ask a question" portion of the feature (5). I used a light and dark blue, to not only fall in line with Wikipedia's color scheme, but I used each one to emphasize age and wisdom distinction, respectively. All of this, however, is probably me trying to justify that my logo idea is smart and my brain probably just put stuff together that thought looked cool together. I've added my logo above for ideas to consider, and I'll make adjustments (like quality improvements), if it's ever decided on. Currently, it's just a mockup. Panini! • 🥪 00:33, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I very much like your suggestion, Panini!, though I don't know that it's immediately obvious what the "N" and "M" stand for ("newcomer mentorship" / "newcomer & mentor", right?). Then again, I don't think that's your fault—I don't know that we actually have much of an official title for the mentorship programme. I think ideally the logo would say something that redirects here, whereas WP:NM takes you to Wikipedia:Notability (music). (Though there's not many spare two-letter abbreviations.) — Bilorv (talk) 23:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
That's a really good point. If there's an official title of abbreviation I'll make a swap, but for now I've made an alternate logo without an abbreviation. I've made the second hand larger to further show age and wisdom distinction, and also messed with colors a bit to introduce a background circle, which I've angled to represent the upward momentum of experience. Like last time, however, is me justifying my logo concept is ingenious. Panini! • 🥪 01:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi Panini, I like the concept, but while I get what you were going for with the small/large update, to me it runs the risk of "big powerful user/small, inconsequential, newcomer", which obviously is not what we want (or intend). Nosebagbear (talk) 09:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
After waking up this morning to get another take on it, I totally agree. If these two were to fistbump, the newcomer would walk away with a broken hand and probably retire. I've made them the same size and angled them to make up for the lost space. It gives off more of a "Hurrah!" statement now. Panini! • 🥪 17:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I actually like that. You did a great job with the changes, Panini!. It's simple yet conveys the important message we are trying to get out. We are here to be an encouragement to editors by answering their Wikipedia related questions and assisting them in navigating Wikipedia successfully. Ultimately this is their journey. We are like a guide for those who ask for or seek out one. --ARoseWolf 17:41, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
That's a big improvement, Panini, thanks :) I especially like the angled upwards bit.
I personally preferred the newcomer colour from the NM one, to the turquoise of this one, but if I've reached that level of nitpicking comment, then it's time for me to leave it to those with more artistic talent than I'll ever have!
As more general comments across the full set - I share the common thoughts on the first five, the Growth team logo is quite cool but is really theirs - they do a broader scope than just the mentorship programme, so that could be confusing, and I'd hold off from using it. Having a letter one is beneficial, and I liked the style as well, but the "letters that link" aspect is well-made. I had a look to see if any of the remaining ones seemed a possible fit, but nothing jumped out. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I liked the old turquoise revision as well, but both colors didn't stand out well against the blue background circle so I had to make them bolder. I reverted to the old turquoise but kept the new navy blue, and made the background circle more transparent to make up for it. Panini! • 🥪 23:14, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

One query I do have, however: Nick Moyes, is this due to an interest of stemming off the mentorship program into a separate, official feature, or simply a way to identify it? As in, all of these features (the Homepage, Help Panel, Mentorship) all build up this page we're currently on. Are you looking for a scheme so you can split off Mentorship into its own page, and this current page will simply speak generally of it? If so, I would support the concept; a place to organize Mentorship information for both mentors and mentees alike, like the adoption program, would be beneficial in my opinion. I feel the mentor list is cluttered with the instructions and FAQ, anyways. Panini! • 🥪 23:14, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Panini! I'm not trying to do a 'take-over' job of the mentorship feature from the WMF Growth Team, if that's what you mean. But I do see Mentorship as both a discrete element and a new application of that term on English Wikipedia. And it's going to become more and more used as time goes by. So, there really needs to be one single place that succinctly explains what this new mentee-mentor thingy means to both parties, and it must not be left as information spread across multiple pages, requiring a lot of effort to understand. That is especially so for the newcomer (see @Marchjuly's concerns below). Until recently, 'Mentorship' either meant voluntary medium- to long-term adoption at WP:AAU, or some sort of ArbComm-imposed training sanction as a last resort to stop a disruptive or incompetent editor being indefed.
I agree that the FAQ info I put at WP:Mentor list (new user feature) is not in best right place. But I felt I had to put something somewhere, and that was the best that was, and is, currently available.
We have long had an essay (WP:MENTORSHIP), and I feel that page is now going to be made almost completely redundant and/or misleading unless it is reworked somehow. Hence this ongoing proposal to usurp Wikipedia:Mentorship and its associated shortcuts. I feel that a single page on this new form of Growth Team mentorship is needed, and that we have shortcuts and terms that allow anyone to find out what it all means. It was this addition of a link to the Growth Teak Mentorship feature that made me appreciate the need for an identifiable logo and landing page for mentorship (distinct from the other elements) that caused me to think about it. That said, I'm sure @MMiller (WMF) and his team would prefer all discussions to be kept in as few places as possible whilst it is being developed.
Regarding logos: I like where you're going with 8). Right now I feel it's still a bit on the naïve side, still a bit too hard to discern the elements and not contrasty enough. But it is certainly going in the right direction. (Having worked with designers to produce logos for some of my own projects, I know how hard it is to achieve - it's something outside my own skillset, though. I can't even choose what colour paint to put on when I'm redecorating!) Nick Moyes (talk) 11:27, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Nick above, specifically in regards to placement of the definition of what the mentee-mentor experience means for both parties. If new editors have to go to three of four places to find out all the information then that may become a discouragement from engaging in the process or even editing itself. Likewise, keeping it simple for even the mentors and seasoned/veteran editors that have been on Wikipedia may encourage participation. Even if there are multiple definitions of what a mentor or a mentee is on Wikipedia, having them in as few places as possible will be beneficial. --ARoseWolf 13:24, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Nick Moyes, I'm not really sure what it is you mean when you say naïve; do you mean that the concept doesn't help visualize what exactly the mentorship feature is and does?
As per your contrasting issues, there are only so many shades of blue, so I took an alternative approach and jumped to red and blue, seen in alt2. I returned to it a bit later and wound up with a completely different design and I'm not sure how. I've introduced two circles of different colors to make a sort of "merged" feel to signify a mentor/mentee bond. To make the hands stand out against it I've added a black outline (imperfect on purpose). For a less bold change I also made alt2a, which retains the original concept. Does this new variant depict your suggestion? Panini! • 🥪 05:26, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
For a less bold update, I updated alt1 to have the black outline, and made the background circle less transparent. Panini! • 🥪 15:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm probably reading way too much into the logo but I like that the hands are the same size, which indicates that we are all equal and mentors/mentees alike started from the same place. I think I like alt1 and alt2a over alt2 because there is one oval/circle behind the two thumbs up hands, as opposed to two, which, to me, indicates we are all here for one singular goal, to build a better encyclopedia. However I like alt1 more than alt2a because, though the hands contrast in Colour, they are both, at their basic, coming from the same source. Darker Blue indicating not more importance but a greater depth of knowledge in how to navigate Wikipedia and a deeper understanding of the community that I would hope all mentors have or are quickly gaining knowledge of. For me, the red and blue are too contrasting and feel like they are opposing each other. I also love that the Colours in alt1 are all shades of Blue which, in my world, means utilizing the talents we each have to build wisdom through experience. Wikipedia tells a story, a conglomeration of Songs, if you will, about various subjects but all point to the human story, the one Symphony of the Earth. We limit that to what we consider notable subjects because that's our niche, our part of the Song as an encyclopedia. Thus, Blue is the perfect Colour to use and each aspect of alt1 further explains the dynamic of mentor/mentee and the collaboration between editors (the thumbs up hands with the "?" and the "!") to build a better community/encyclopedia (The oval/circle behind us) using our talents and experiences, no matter which role we have, to have an impact on what is included (Blue). That's just personal observations and thoughts. I think you have done a masterful job with each of the logos, Panini!. --ARoseWolf 15:45, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
@Panini! By "naïve", no, I was not suggesting your idea failed to summarise the concept of mentorship. In fact, I think it does it very well. When I've given my briefs to designers, I might describe my own initial sketches as 'naïve' - meaning they embrace the idea I want to get over, but are lacking in the sharpness, simplicity and sophistication I would expect from a professional designer. That is not intended to insult you in any way- it's just a description of what I want the designer to pick up and enhance. I could honestly do no better - believe me.
I quite like your version 8) and 9), but also this one, which you did not include here, but includes clear text, which I rather like. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:12, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I ditched the words in the end because I felt they would be redundant; it's not going to be taken out of context, and other descriptors are going to be present. I was thinking of it like an identifier, but I've added the words back among other changes. I wish I had the professional tools to make it refined and more official, but Canva is as far as I can take it (and I'm certainly not paying two-hundred dollars for the "Pro" version). I leave the floor open for other ideas. Panini! • 🥪 12:52, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Finding the homepage

I cannot find the home now. I feel this is the place to ask. My apologies as I am trying to learn how to interpret into technological language as I go. I think in a pattern that is best described as “musicophilia,” - thinking in old and new verse/music and letting that guide me. I just am looking for some nice tea if that’s available. Thank you. Tl:dr is there a mentor available? Muchmi (talk) 20:45, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Again apologies if I’m replying in wrong area. Is there a coding option available for new users to go to a “false-secondary weblink” that doesn’t actually change anything? It could trigger the “tea-house” response when someone tries to edit, without actually editing anything. Then the creator can choose to approve or deny the edits based on intended design. Like a Matrix loop that holds a door open without worrying so much about constant reviewing. I assume the goal is to move forward as a whole in this Java language, tho I think in Janus.

TL:DR instead of accidental edits, the link for new users is false and triggers a point of review to the page creators to decide to “approve or deny” the edit. I would hope that would keep curiosity engaged with less strain in the creators. Muchmi (talk) 21:05, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@Muchmi: you might be looking for Special:Homepage or Wikipedia:Teahouse. I believe you can see the homepage link by visiting your userpage (this works on desktop at least). You can type either page name directly into the search bar if nothing else works. — Bilorv (talk) 16:32, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Creating a new article

Hello! When it says "To successfully create a new article, you'll need to use many of the skills you can learn through completing some easier tasks. To learn more about how to create a new article, click here," is there a way to make it so I can select that option? Thank you! Helloheart (talk) 03:01, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Helloheart, and thank you for your question. At the moment, there is no mechanism to "unlock" the article creation option. Creating articles is a complicated process, that requires knowing multiple aspects of Wikipedia. Also, these aspects vary between Wikipedias. And it is a low requested feature. As a consequence, we haven't started working on it. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
@Helloheart -- welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for trying out the homepage. I hope it's been helpful so far, and we would be happy to hear any other feedback you have on it. If you feel like you're ready to create a new article, you can do that at this link: Wikipedia:Article wizard. If you get stuck, feel free to ask here, or to ask your mentor on your homepage. Stay in touch! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
It's worth saying that creating an article requires the autoconfirmed permission, which you should have. However, many editors are not ready to create an article in knowledge/skills until they have reached hundreds or thousands of edits. At the moment, Helloheart, it looks like you are learning about our verifiability policy and what makes sources reliable, but I would question whether you are ready to begin assessing whether a collection of reliable sources is sufficient for the bar of notability (I'm 30,000 edits in and I still encounter lots of cases where I struggle). — Bilorv (talk) 11:15, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Student editors being assigned mentors

Did the Growth Team set the mentorship feature up to take into account student editors who are participating courses supported by Wikipedia:Wiki Ed? If not, then the Growth Team might want to get togther with Wiki Ed to make sure there's no issues between the two. Most Wiki Ed courses are assigned one or two Wiki Ed staff members and these users are essentially mentors when it comes to Wikipedia stuff. Moreover, students might end up getting confused or even stressed if they've got more than one "mentor" giving them advice. The worst case scenario would be conflicting advice in which the student doesn't know who they should be listening to and ends up making a mistake as a result. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

IF someone from wikied or another program wants to claim "their" students, they can just do it - the "student" role is not part of mediawiki, so there is no way for extensions to know about it. Seems like the best way forward on this is for these "wiki ed" staffers to register as manual mentors and make claiming their students part of their workflow. — xaosflux Talk 10:49, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Some of the volunteers involved in co-ordinating WikiEd should be actively making sure that this happens as a matter of process, as the academic staff members generally have low knowledge of Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 11:19, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
I linked this in from Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. — xaosflux Talk 12:07, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Hello @Marchjuly! Thanks for checking in about this. Back when we first started the discussion of the Growth features here, @Sage (Wiki Ed) brought up the needs of Wiki Ed in this thread. At that time, we made it possible to exclude Wiki Ed from the Growth features because the features were not yet being given to all new accounts, and so we wanted to avoid confusion from some students having them and other students not having them. I'm glad you started this thread, because it's a good time to check in about whether the Growth features are being given to Wiki Ed signups at all -- Sage would be able to answer us. Now that 100% of new accounts get the features, perhaps that affects how things should go with Wiki Ed. And we can also discuss what would work for mentorship, and whether Special:ClaimMentee would do the trick. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for the responses. I only asked because one of the new additions to my mentees’ list is a student editor participating in a Wiki Ed course. — Marchjuly (talk) 10:37, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Mentor Dashboard - needs a talk page link

I'd like to request that we add a link to the Mentees' talk pages after each username in the Dashboard, and enable whatever script it is that permits a mouseover with Navigation Popups to display a preview of both it and the mentee's Userpage. That way one can quickly check if a mentee has already said anything about themselves on their userpage, or if they've been welcomed, warned or otherwise communicated with on their talkpage without having to leave the Dashboard. It'd be quick and wouldn't take up much space, either.

I can't remember whether I mentioned this before - or just thought it and never did anything about it. But it never hurts to mention good ideas twice. LOL! Nick Moyes (talk) 19:36, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I like this idea. I'm big on welcoming new mentees and even offering to assist if I see they are struggling. Seeing a lot of warnings doesn't necessarily dissuade me from welcoming or getting involved. Yes, we could wait for them to ask a question but most people won't ask and would just try to plow ahead until they burn out and leave. I feel, as a mentor, when I see someone struggling but trying to do something in good faith then it just means they need someone to step up and offer guidance. Something like this would be helpful. --ARoseWolf 20:10, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
I was just wishing for this feature yesterday, so this is perfect timing. I like the preview idea as well. Perfect4th (talk) 20:20, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
I asked about adding navpopups gadget to the mentee list, pending at Wikipedia_talk:Tools/Navigation_popups#Enable_for_userlist_on_Special:MentorDashboard?. — xaosflux Talk 00:27, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for doing that (in the right place). Nick Moyes (talk) 08:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

General information page for mentees

Is there a general information page specifically developed with mentees in mind that explains what this feature is and how it works? Are mentees being given a link to this page if there is? I recently got a question from a mentee about this feature and things that it seems should be explained to mentees from the start. -- Marchjuly (talk) 20:39, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

As yet, there's not one single page just to explain what this form of mentorship means. So quite a bit of unravelling would need to be done from the Growth Team Features page, I feel.
We do have WP:MENTORSHIP, which is an now out-of-date essay. I would welcome more input to this proposal in order to gain a clear consensus whether or not to usurp that page and the shortcut to it. Once we have that, I think elements of what mentorship is about (aimed predominately at the Mentee and then the Mentor) could be simply explained there. Or does anyone have an alternative suggestion? (I note that mentorship in the old-fashioned sense of the word for a wayward editor was used recently at a very extensive WP:ANI discussion, but the newer use of 'mentorship' now predominates, I feel. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:43, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
As I explained in my reply to the mentee on my user talk page, "mentorship" in some form of another has been around for quite a while on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user is essentially a form of mentorship. So, if this new Growth Team feature is basically intended to replace what's been done up until now, then I agree that having multiple pages (even if they're only essays) may turn out to be more confusing than helpful. It makes little sense to me to have competing mentorship features when they probably could all be combined together since the objectives seem to be the same. I'm not sure it's necessary to replace the older essays or general information pages, but perhaps they should be tagged with {{Historical}} instead of a hatnotes or links to WP:GTF. Of course, that might require discussion somewhere because not everyone may agree with phasing out the older ways of mentoring, but it should be the Growth Team that goes about imitiating that discussion. Are new accounts given any information at all about this new form of mentorship? If not and if a separate page isn't really needed, then perhaps a welcome template specifically for mentees could be created to include some basic information about mentorship. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:36, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
Marchjuly, thank you for mentioning the Welcome template idea. We could use an updated welcome template for mentees that includes the process of contacting your mentor among the other options like the Teahouse and Help Center. I'm not big on the automated message because I like the personal interaction of contacting mentees but I'm not opposed to the idea either. --ARoseWolf 14:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
I have been welcoming mentees that make edits with a welcome template I adapted from Panini!'s mentor welcome template. It doesn't fully explain the mentorship feature, but lets them know they can ask me questions on my talk page and links them to the Teahouse. Perfect4th (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
Perfect4th, love it! Thank you and Panini!.--ARoseWolf 17:35, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Newsletter

I'd like to remind you that the Growth team publishes a newsletter. As this newsletter shares the most recent updates with the communities, I think it would be a reasonable move to have it distributed on this page. What do you think?

You can also subscribe to it. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): I certainly think it's good to have the newsletter available. I do feel that too many newsletters can make finding the real topic discussion on a talk page slightly more difficult. But it's so relevant to this page, that it would be a good idea to transclude it. Maybe offer it in a collapsible form?
On a related note, I wondered where all the recent discussions had gone, and found most had been archived. I thinks it's important to keep most recent topics visible, so I have enhanced the min threads left after archiving from 2 to 5 (and would be happy to see it raised somewhat higher, TBH). Nick Moyes (talk) 10:46, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes, thank you for your opinion. Collapsed contents aren known for not being read though. What do you think of archiving the previous newsletter when the new one is available on this page? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF) TBH: I don't have an especially strong view against the newsletter being visible. I just wanted to say that sometimes they can dominate a page, especially if all but the most recent posts have been archived. (I hate having to look back at archives when I'd rather see a whole load or pertinent discussions on one talk page - even a long one) So please do what you think is best - we could just manually collapse the previous newsletters. But go for it, and post them here, by all means! Nick Moyes (talk) 15:44, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, NIck. Let's test and figure out. I'll subscribe this page soon, and the next newsletter will be distribute here late August/early September. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:52, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Automatic welcoming of mentees

This is sort of related to Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Archive 3#Which Templates and Help pages might needing updating after full rollout? discussed above, but slightly different which is why I'm starting a new thread. In my opinion, it seems a bit pointless to assign mentees to mentors if the mentees don't [know] this is being done. I don't know whether every newly created account is being randomly assigned to a mentor or only those that request it (e.g. some box that can be checked like "Would you like to be assigned to a mentor?)" when people create an acount, but mentoring so far (at least in my opinion) seems to be a different version of WP:PC.

Maybe the feature should be option for only those who want it, and maybe there's should be a special "welcome" template that's automatically added to the user talk pages of those who do opt in. The template could include links to helpful pages for new editors like other welcome templates do, but it could also include a link to the assigned mentor's page with an open invitation to contact that mentor if help is needed. I've had a number of acocunts appear so far in my mentor dashboard, but most of them make only one or two edits. Some the editors are also problematic and have ended up being reverted by others or even to page creation being speedily deleted; some have even already been blocked.

I think the whole mentor/mentee relationship can only work as intended when mentees actually want help and know where to ask for it. Those that are just looking to cause mischief aren't going to want guidance, but those who might not know any better should know this option exists and is available to them. I've noticed that some non-English Wikipedia projects automatically add a welcome template to new account user pages as soon as the account accesses the site (at least that's been my own experience), but English Wikipedia seems to wait until some edit has been made (and often this is a bad edit). Maybe this is something that the Growth Team should consider. Although a mentor appearing suddenly out of the blue posting "Hi, I've been assigned as your mentor. If you've any questions feel free to ask." sounds like a really great thing, some new editors may be put off by receiving unsolicited advice or feel like their being monitored by their mentor, particularly if the mentor ends up telling them (even very politely) that they did something wrong. Things currently don't seem very different from the way they've always been done when it comes to new editors, and there seems to be no advantage to being assigned a mentor. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Just going to add that I've been asked a question for the first time by one of my assigned mentees. Unfortunately, this editor made two edits: one on my user talk page and one to an article that I ended up reverting. The question was fine, but edit they made needed to be reverted even though it was made in good faith. I added a welcome template to their user talk page, but the "bad" edit might have been possibly not made if some sort of welcome template had been added right after the account had been created. Too often the first edit made by someone well-meaning but not familiar with some Wikipedia policy or guideline ends up getting reverted by either a bot or someone using a tool/script to patrol articles. Often the edit summary the reverter leaves mentions something about vandalism (even when it's not) or disruption which leads to the first post left on the user's talk page being a WP:UW. If, for example, editors had the option of becoming a mentee when they create an account, perhaps this could be indicated in some way and responses could then take that into consideration. In addition, if they provided with information about things like the Teahouse or the Wikipedia Adventure as well as some basic information about Wikipedia editing, then perhaps there would be a way to help them avoid making their first experience at editing an unpleasant one. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:08, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

One of the issues I have actually seen in the past leads to the discouragement of adding a welcome message to an editors talk page until and unless they make their first real edit to the encyclopedia, not their user page, talk page or if their first edit was reverted for any reason, even in good faith. And if you happen to welcome an editor that turns out to be a sockpuppet or a vandal, both of which I have had as assigned mentees, then you can, as I have seen, get a very stern warning for that. You brought up an excellent idea, Marchjuly, and I would support it. --ARoseWolf 13:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Three quick points, including two that new users would benefit from knowing:
  • New users who have been allocated a 'mentor' would benefit from knowing this has happened once they start editing.
  • New users who have not been allocated a mentor but who have started editing might benefit from knowing how they can get a mentor assigned.
  • There's likely to be some overlap with the Teahouse bot welcome message User:HostBot/Invitation (pinging Jtmorgan who runs it) and perhaps some opportunity for combining our efforts, and avoiding over-templating a new user with two similar invitations. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:20, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
@Marchjuly, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
A reminder: the current way to assign a mentor to a newcomer is very simple: a mentor is assigned to any new account. Then, a new account is guided to their Homepage, where they see that they have an assigned mentor. This way, any newcomer know they have a mentor, and they can immediately ask for help if they like to. It is much easier to directly ask someone for assistance, than requesting access to a mentor to then ask them a question. As a volunteer mentor at my home wiki, the majority my assigned mentees' first edit is to ask me a question. Sometimes, I have to tell them that their project won't fit Wikipedia. Or I can reassure them about their upcoming first edit.
What I describes in the previous paragraph is the default experience, which doesn't apply to English Wikipedia. Your wiki has a unique configuration: 100% of newcomers have a mentor assigned in the database, but only 10% of newcomers will see the mentorship module on their Homepage. It is the only way for them to know about their mentor. We did this because we are afraid of overloading the current (short) list of mentors. But the final goal would be to have a mentor for everyone on their homepage, by default.
As you noted, some other wikis proactively post a welcome message (by bot), signed by the mentor (sometimes using the {{#mentor}} magicword to sign it). This way, newcomers have a consistent experience: they are welcomed by the same person at all places. As the welcome message is only sent to users who made at least one edit, it would indeed be a nice way to inform them about their mentor. It is up to your community to change this. :)
@Nick Moyes, I observe at my wikis that some users who have the option to contact several users contact them all. It then multiplies the number of users who reply to the user. This is something to consider if you consider editing the Teahouse invite.
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
I typically wait until they have made their first edit to main space before I welcome and if they already have a welcome message then I check to make sure it offers an invite to the Teahouse. If it doesn't then I leave one. If it does then I may drop a little note to let them know I'm here if they have questions or need help. If there is a way to develop an automated message then I'm not necessarily opposed but I still prefer the personal touch, even of a welcome template. Maybe that's an option, and one where the Teahouse and Growth Team can work together to produce a welcome template for mentors that includes key links, important information and an invite to the Teahouse like similar welcome templates already do. That may be something already considered, idk, it was just a thought. I can just continue with my more personalized welcomes too. --ARoseWolf 18:13, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
@Marchjuly, @ARoseWolf, @Nick Moyes, @Trizek (WMF), @FormalDude, and anyone else who happens to stop by:
I've created {{Mentor welcome}} for GTF mentors to use. I see FormalDude had already created a similar template, and perhaps I'll copy and paste (with attribution on talk page!) some of the phrasing he used. But I thought everyone here would use one of the two templates. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:03, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Oooh looks great! Thanks! ––FormalDude talk 23:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@I dream of horses, it is a great idea!
From my volunteer experience at fr.wp, we observed that a it is more efficient to write "I am Trizek and I've been assigned as your '''mentor'''." This way, the users know who sends the message without needing to read the signature. This is how the welcome template is formatted (example): introducing the mentor's name at the very first place.
Also, in your message, you should add a link to the Homepage as you mention it. The homepage is a special page, its content is personalized (like the watchlist), so using special:Homepage as a link is safe.
Hope this helps. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
Ping @FormalDude, as my comments may be interesting as well for User:FormalDude/UW-metor. ;) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
 Done and Thank you I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 10:59, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Editor concern over suggested edits portion of homepage

This thread (now archived here) might be of interest to those involved with the Growth Team. I've noticed a couple editors who are wanting to get more involved but are not finding much they can help with in their suggested edits (when I had it active some months back I was having similar issues). Of course, it's not going to be perfect for every user, but it sounds like the grammar and spelling fixes are not being helpful for new users, and I encountered a few issues with editors overlinking an article tagged as underlinked a while back. I don't know if there is currently something in place to suggest tasks that are more likely to be newcomer-friendly? Maybe a feature for editors to skip or remove a suggestion (or indicate no interest) would be helpful to weed out some of the more difficult edits as well. Perfect4th (talk) 14:30, 23 August 2022 (UTC) archived link added 14:48, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I see this problem a lot too. Although we could just tell editors to remove the tag if it is inappropriate. Sungodtemple (talk) 17:11, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
Hello, thanks for bringing this conversation to my attention @Perfect4th and @Sungodtemple !
My name is Kirsten, and I’ve recently started taking over from MMiller (WMF) as Product Manager on the Growth team (Marshall is still with the WMF, working with multiple teams now). I’m very interested in hearing different perspectives regarding the newcomer homepage and suggested edits, so thanks, @LoveElectronicLiterature, for starting that thread! Thanks also to @Casualdejekyll, @Asilvering, @Berrely, @Hoary, and @Tigraan for joining the conversation at the Teahouse; it’s really amazing to see so many people chiming in to help a new editor in such a positive way!
Suggested edits on the newcomer Homepage work well for some newcomers, but certainly many of these tasks are still quite challenging or are no longer relevant due to outdated maintenance templates. The Suggested Edits displayed to newcomers are selected because they have specific maintenance templates (added by the community) and those maintenance templates have been identified as fitting certain newcomer task types in English Wikipedia’s Growth Configuration. So, for example, if an article is tagged with the {tone} template, then it might be suggested to a newcomer as needing a copyedit. Once the article is improved enough that someone removes the {tone} template, then it will also get removed from the newcomer Suggested Edits feed. In other words, the Suggested Edits feed is essentially human-curated: we only include article suggestions that have been tagged as needing attention by the community.
As for improvements that can be made immediately: administrators can adjust their Growth Configuration to best meet their wiki’s needs.
  • If it seems like there is a certain copyedit template that is especially challenging for newcomers, then perhaps it should be removed from the configuration.  
  • People could also spend time cleaning up the application of certain templates that are included in the Growth Configuration; if maintenance templates are no longer relevant, then they should be removed from the article.
  • Or perhaps there is a new template that should be created? A new maintenance template could be created that is especially geared towards newcomers, and the Growth Configuration could be updated to only pull suggestions from that maintenance template.
Do any of those options sound like they would help?
It sounds like one of the challenges is that maintenance templates aren’t always removed after an article is improved. We’ve discussed whether we should consider a suggested edit to help manage maintenance templates and remove the template from articles that have already been fixed, but we see this as a task that likely requires a fair amount of knowledge about Wikipedia policies and norms.  Do you agree, or do you think that advanced newcomers might be equipped for this type of task? Or perhaps newcomers could help by simply adding a suggestion to a talk page rather than removing the template tag themselves? Please let me know if you have any ideas around this.
Maintenance templates tend to flag the article as a whole as needing attention, but they can be too broad and open-ended to provide the level of guidance a brand new editor needs – for instance, they might wonder where in the article they should look for grammar issues. For this very reason, the Growth team has been working towards creating “Structured Tasks” for the suggested edits feed. Structured tasks break down the editing workflow into a series of steps that newcomers can easily accomplish.  Current structured tasks (“add a link” and “add an image”) are not yet available on English Wikipedia, but we have been testing them on a smaller subset of wikis and gradually rolling them out to more wikis as we iterate and improve the tasks.  The great news is that our experiment analysis shows that these structured tasks are really helping more newcomers make an initial edit, as well as improve newcomer retention!  But we have also discovered that they create problematic edits along with the valuable ones, and that they can overwhelm patrollers.  So as we continue to improve these structured tasks we need to hear from this community, too. How do you think these tasks might work on English Wikipedia? Do you have any suggestions for other types of structured tasks that could work well for newcomers on English Wikipedia?
Thanks again, Perfect4th, for posting here so I didn’t miss the Teahouse conversation! Please feel free to reach out at any point if you ever feel like there is feedback the Growth team should see.
Prior to releasing Suggested Edits on English Wikipedia, we will start a discussion with the community to explain the feature further and gather feedback.  Once we are at that stage, would any of you be interested in providing feedback or being involved in the rollout discussion? KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:07, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF I actually think that "copy edit" should be removed entirely from the newcomer homepage. It is needlessly confusing, since what Wikipedians have in mind for these tags is often "significant writing changes", not "minor spelling, grammar, and style fixes", which is what "copy edit" means everywhere else. I raised some similar concerns when I was new, so rather than rewrite them, here's what was apparently my 8th edit on Wikipedia: [1]. Sdkb's suggestion, providing newcomers with the information that tags are community-added, and sometimes they can be wrong, would be useful.
Regarding we see this as a task that likely requires a fair amount of knowledge about Wikipedia policies and norms, I agree with you. I don't think suggesting that editors try the Talk page of the article is necessarily helpful, since responses are unlikely to come quickly. I like the idea of Structured Tasks a lot and think that is much more helpful than pointing people at maintenance tags that may have been sitting around since 2010. -- asilvering (talk) 02:27, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
But regarding other types of structured tasks and so on... Well, I like the idea of Structured Tasks, but that's because they are closer to what would be actually helpful: a tutorial. Why teach newbies how to add links and images in mainspace, if we're worried about patroller workload and problematic edits? Why not have some kind of tutorial that new users can do in, say, their user sandbox? -- asilvering (talk) 02:37, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. I agree, the copy edit is just so overwhelming! There are simpler tasks that might be pointed out by humans (such as actual simple editing). Or you could have a warning. Structured tasks would help a lot--could you have a page just where humans could say, this is a task worth doing?
I am really trying to start either a taskforce under women writers or a new project for women writers in electronic literature and we have a few folks interested as well. But we need easy tasks, not major citation work. Thank you! LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 12:55, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again, @LoveElectronicLiterature for all the feedback!  It’s definitely impactful to hear that even such a promising new editor like you (who is already making significant contributions and considering starting a taskforce or project) is still finding these copy edit tasks overwhelming. Hopefully, the work on a Copy Edit structure task will eventually provide initial “easy” suggested edits that newcomers can start with.  
You mentioned we could provide a better warning. The current copy under Suggested Edits reads: “Other users have noted these articles need work.”  How do you think we should rephrase that to add more clarity?
I'm glad to hear that you think structured tasks could help! As for your question about providing a page just for humans to review if a task is worth doing: I think that makes a lot of sense for the current suggested edits feed, but I’m not sure how well it would work for structured tasks.  Current structured tasks utilize machine suggestions, and the main task for the newcomer is to decide if it’s a good or bad suggestion.  If an advanced contributor reviews the suggestion ahead of time, then essentially the task is already completed.  But I definitely agree that would be a nice idea for the current unstructured tasks: ideally we should only display suggested edits that are newcomer-friendly, still relevant, and worth doing. The community can manage this through updating maintenance templates and the Growth Configuration.  For example, if a “newcomer copy edit” maintenance template was created, that could essentially be used like you suggest. Personally, I think it's a great idea, but it would require a community discussion and even more contributor time to ensure there was an up-to-date queue of articles with that maintenance template.
What do you think about Perfect4th's idea to remove {{Tone}} and {{Advert}} templates and add {{Cleanup tense}} to the Growth Configuration? KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:16, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for taking my concerns into consideration and working to improve newbies' experiences. I have just retired from a 31-year career of technical writing in complex areas and teaching writing in simpler areas. I think that Perfect4th's idea makes great sense. Keep it as simple as possible.
If I may suggest, a more welcoming home page may make a difference here. You could have the Growth Configuration with a warning as well, looking something like this:
((((Welcome NewBie. You could get started by looking at these articles, which a bot has determined needs some simpler work, like fixing tenses. Please help us by either fixing the grammar or making a note on the Talk tab that more work is needed. Your human judgment will help us note what work needs to be done. You could also look at articles you are interested in and make simple edits on the article itself or discuss more complex work needed in the Talk tab.))))
Where (((( is the correct program notation :P ))))
A simple intro like this would make the newbies feel welcomed and ensure that their participation was not only valued, but well directed. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 21:13, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you so much for the feedback, @LoveElectronicLiterature ! I like the idea of encouraging newcomers to add a topic to the Talk page if more discussion is needed or if a maintenance template is out-of-date. Not only is that helping provide more guidance for newcomers, but encouraging them to engage in a new way. We certainly want to keep instructions succinct, but perhaps they are too succinct now. I'll chat with the team about this idea. KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:54, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. Yes, I think that an instruction asking newbies to fix simple errors as they see them in the flagged article and then to engage in a discussion on the talk page would welcome people into the community with respect. It is also a thrill to get a mention back in your email box--oh oh they paid attention to what *I* thought. Cool. I'll keep being engaged! LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 02:07, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
@LoveElectronicLiterature Great, thanks again for all of your helpful responses!
Thanks to the Talk pages project, I think Talk pages are now far more newcomer friendly than they used to be, so it seems like a great time to explore these ideas. I've chatted with our UX designer about the feedback from this thread, and opened a Phabricator task related to exploring all of this in more depth: T316952
Feel free to reply here or in that task if you (or anyone else reading this) have further feedback about this idea. Thanks! KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:38, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I agree, @Asilvering, we currently have a broad definition of “copy edit” and many of these tasks are confusing and challenging for newcomers.  We actually hope to provide a Copy Edit structure task in the future, which would focus on providing newcomers with easier spelling and grammar suggestions by utilizing an integration with an open source spell-checker or grammar-checking tool.  Our hope is that these easier structured tasks could be the initial “easy” suggested edits that newcomers start with, and then eventually they can progress to more challenging edits. (It’s great to read your previous feedback, as this sounds like exactly what you were asking for previously!)  In the meantime, the English community has the ability to change the Growth Configuration maintenance templates assigned to Copy Edit.  What do you think about @Perfect4th's idea to remove {{Tone}} and {{Advert}} templates and add {{Cleanup tense}} to the Growth Configuration?
In your feedback from last year, you also mentioned: “We're told to make some copy edits, which are ballparked as a 5-10 minute task, but the articles that are linked are in need of so, so much more work than that.”   Do you think part of the frustration with the Copy Edit tasks is that they are identified as “EASY” tasks that take “5 - 10 minutes”?  How do you think we could make it more clear that a newcomer just needs to make a small improvement, not fix the whole article?
You mentioned that we could provide newcomers with the information that tags are community-added, and sometimes wrong. That’s certainly an easy update we could consider. The current copy under Suggested Edits reads: “Other users have noted these articles need work.”  How do you think we should rephrase that to add more clarity?
I agree that tutorials or contextual instructions need to be included for newcomers to help guide them in their initial edits. We are trying to incorporate more tutorial-style onboarding into Structured tasks, as well as a help panel tutorial for unstructured suggested edits. However, we are also trying to build out a newcomer experience guided by legitimate peripheral participation & situated learning theory. We think newcomers need simple and low-risk tasks that allow them to make small contributions to Wikipedia. In the past it’s been found that tutorials, like the Wikipedia Adventure, haven’t had much of an impact on newcomer activity (The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for New Users). We still have so much more to do, but “add a link” analysis shows that this structured task is working: it increases the probability that newcomers will make their first article edit (+16.6% over baseline) and the probability that they are retained as newcomers (+16.2% over baseline). What do you think of this balance between incorporating mini-tutorials and contextual instructions with small structured tasks? KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:03, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Certainly, part of the frustration is "copy edit" being marked as "easy", but also with it being called "copy edit". I note that the Growth Configuration heading for copy edits says templates to find articles that need copy editing, such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation improvements - currently only one of the listed templates fits that description (Template:Inappropriate person). If the Growth Configuration actually only had templates that fit the stated description, I think they would all be likely to be "easy" edits and that problem would evaporate. Tense would be fine there. All the others (tone, advert, etc) could go to a "harder" newcomer edit level, but there isn't one currently that they'd fit into. A new one, maybe called "text cleanup", could hold those?
The problem with "other users have noted these articles need work" is that it implies that the articles still need that work. I think it's fine to be direct and explicit about it, for example: "These articles are suggested for you because they have outstanding maintenance tags. These tags were applied by other editors and may no longer be relevant to the current version of the article. If you have questions about article content, start a post on the Talk page of the article." Anything that draws some attention to the fact that the tags are user-applied and might be wrong or out of date would help. If you want to keep the text short on the homepage itself, you could just add some kind of "click here for more information" addendum and give a brief explanation.
Regarding TWA/situated learning: certainly, simple and low-risk tasks are useful. Showing new users that this really is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit (and yes, that means you)", is important. I'm confused that you would imply that TWA is not situated learning but structured tasks are, when the study you linked says that TWA produces a "positive socialization experience" (that's your situated learning right there!). Nor do I see how structured tasks are at odds with a tutorial - they can easily be linked, as the "tutorial-style onboarding" task you linked shows. For editing tasks that don't lend themselves to machine-generated suggestions, a tutorial exercise you can do before being referred to some suggested articles in mainspace would serve a similar purpose. -- asilvering (talk) 23:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, @Asilvering! I really appreciate that feedback, and I've opened a task to cover your feedback about including a harder newcomer task to cover some of the more challenging maintenance templates that don't belong in the "Easy" Copy edit category: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T316610. I don't think this is something we will pull in immediately, but I think it's a great idea and I hope we can tackle it soon. Does that task cover what you were thinking? Is there anything you would suggest changing?
As for a more immediate change, English admins could remove {{Tone}} and {{Advert}} templates and add {{Cleanup tense}} to the Growth Configuration if that's what seems best.
I'll also chat with the team about the feedback about changing the current text that currently shows below Suggested Edits. I like the idea of providing more clarity around how the Suggested Edits feed is populated, and encouraging newcomers to add a topic to the Talk page if more discussion is needed or if a maintenance template is out-of-date. Not only is that helping provide more guidance for newcomers, but it's encouraging them to engage in a new way. Some of the suggested articles are fairly low-traffic / low-watched pages, do think newcomers would find it demotivating to open a topic and not receive any responses?
Sorry, I don't think I phrased that well about the TWA and situated learning. I mainly meant it seems like having newcomers edit real Wikipedia articles in a small but real way seems to help with retention. "According to LPP, newcomers become members of a community initially by participating in simple and low-risk tasks that are nonetheless productive and necessary and further the goals of the community." (Legitimate peripheral participation). But that being said, I think everyone learns in slightly different ways, so it's great that we can provide a range of options to newcomers.
Thanks again for all the valuable feedback! KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:58, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF: thank you for your work on the Growth Team! I would be interested in providing feedback/being involved in rollout. For specific templates that might be difficult, I do think the {{Tone}} template in particular (and possibly the {{Advert}} template) could be challenging for newcomers to copyedit, especially as they might not be aware of the existence of the NPOV policy yet. {{Cleanup tense}} could be a good one to add, but removing one or both of the former will reduce the edits suggested to newcomers quite a bit. I check in on articles tagged as underlinked occasionally, but there are currently a substantial number of articles encompassed by newcomers' copyedit templates. As for advanced newcomers removing templates, I think some of them have stopped using the suggested edits by that point, but it could be worth a try. The talk page suggestion might work – perhaps tag to filter by would help the requests not languish indefinitely without action?
For Structured Tasks, I think it's a good idea. I'll throw in an appeal for a project I work on: de-orphaning might be useful, at least on en.wiki. The current backlog is massive, and the process is relatively simple. Of course, editors would need to consider how to do so properly (Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage#Goals and scope does a decent job of explaining the considerations for beginners) and not just spam articles with links that don't belong. Maybe it could be a medium-level edit in the hope editors would have a bit better understanding of how it works before trying? Perfect4th (talk) 15:02, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Great, thanks @Perfect4th, we’ll be sure to ping you when we are ready to discuss the structured task features with English Wikipedia.
I agree that {{Tone}} and {{Advert}} templates are often attached to articles that need edits that might be challenging to newcomers. And {{Cleanup tense}} might be a good addition that requires less understanding of Wikipedia policies / NPOV. We want to ensure we don’t reduce the number of suggested edits too drastically, but this change could be easily tested (and actually the change is more gradual as I believe changing the configuration only updates new tasks pulled into the queue and doesn’t remove existing suggestions). The Growth team generally avoids making these changes for communities, but any English admin can make a change to the Growth Configuration.
I love the idea of a de-orphaning newcomer task!  I agree it might be more of a medium-level edit, than easy.  It would be challenging to figure out the UX to make it a structured task, as it requires viewing multiple articles, but the underlying concept does seem newcomer-friendly.  Do you have any ideas for what this user experience flow would look like? Do you think it’s a task that would work well on mobile? KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
KStoller-WMF, I haven't specifically mapped it out, but my process is typically checking if there are any mainspace article links via WhatLinksHere (sometimes links have been added since the tagging), checking the body of the article for any relevant articles to link to, and then searching the article title to see if it or a similar wording of it are mentioned in any other articles – relatively simple in concept, but could definitely be difficult to structure. Perfect4th (talk) 02:59, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Do we have a categorization task? It is (probably) easier than copyedit, already has a tracking category, and (probably) would be easier to patrol. Sungodtemple (talk) 02:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Sungodtemple! No, we don't have a categorization task, but I agree that's a good contender for a newcomer task. I know there are several categorization tools that already exist, but I'm not sure if any of them are very newcomer-friendly. It seems like a task that could also be very mobile-friendly and potentially useful for more advanced contributors as well. I'll add categorization to my list of structured task ideas to consider in the future. Do you have any ideas for what the user flow would look like? Do you think patrollers would find an increase in these type of edits annoying or difficult to manage? KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:29, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF, the main challenge I'd foresee with a categorization task is that the current system has an intensely layered tree of diffusing and non-diffusing subcategories, so it takes some learning to know that one should not add [[Category:Musicians]] to an article already categorized under [[Category:Irish musicians]] (and there are a lot of examples a lot more complex than that). A better categorization system would instead use Wikidata, where it would ideally be simpler to just tag an item as "Nationality:Irish, Occupation:Musician" without having to worry about diffusion. We'll ultimately get to that point, so I think it might make most sense to focus on having newcomers improve Wikidata items that have Wikipedia articles but lack basic information. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:56, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Some newcomers need a lot more attention

Dear Growth Team, this is to inform you that at least some of newcomers need a lot more attention than they are currently getting. Maybe something like mandatory mentorship or supervision for newbies whose edits are found to damage content, with the mentor/supervisor duties not limited to merely answering questions, but including "watching" edits of a mentee so as to revert bad ones immediately and provide some guidance, and by doing so prevent massive content damage and teach newbies desired and effective editing of Wikipedia in a shorter time span than in mentorless mode.

This note is a follow-up to the issue I raised yesterday, feel free to take a look to get the context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ATeahouse#Strange_activity_by_user_VickyBenz 188.66.34.204 (talk) 17:15, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Remember that our mentors are volunteers too. I know I had something like 150 mentees, some more active than others. Currently, 100% of new accounts are assigned to a mentor, unless that's changed. Meaning all of these new editors are being assigned to one of the 88 mentors we have currently. Asking them to "watch" their mentees edits and possibly revert damage, while a suggestion in good faith and well meaning, is a bit much. I tried that just to see if it was possible and its not, not if you want to still edit yourself. Mentor/Mentee interaction should be strictly voluntary. I know I would send out a welcome/introduction message but then its on the mentee to follow-up. Mentorship wasnt meant as a means to police edits. If someone is damaging Wikipedia and we come across it then yes, as an editor we should revert that with a detailed edit summary and even a caution or warning message on the user talk page but if its persistent then we have other venues and admins to deal with that. Policing mentees edits is not something the mentorship program was really designed for. --ARoseWolf 17:32, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
@ARoseWolf: I think while all new accounts are assigned to a mentor in the database, only 10% of them (and those who opt-in) get a help panel to ask questions, and those are the mentees we see in our mentor dashboard. As far as I'm aware, there isn't even a way to see the other 90% of accounts assigned to us, as they're trying to avoid overloading the mentors we have currently. Perfect4th (talk) 18:03, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Perfect4th, I didn't know that. Thank you for that information. I figured it had something to do with the opt in. I still think there is no way a mentor can be expected to watch every mentee and monitor their edits. That would be such a burden for our volunteer mentors. --ARoseWolf 19:09, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Yes, @Perfect4th is correct. Currently, only 10% of newcomers on English Wikipedia see the "Your mentor" module on their homepage. There are so many new accounts created on English Wikipedia, that supporting Mentorship at 100% didn't yet seem feasible. @Trizek (WMF) and I were just talking about this recently. The percentage can be increased if mentors are ready for that, but I'll let Trizek (WMF) start that conversation separately. KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:46, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Hello! I’m Kirsten, the current WMF Product Manager on the Growth team. As someone who thinks a lot about newcomers at Wikipedia, I definitely agree that there is more we can and should do to help provide newcomers with the attention and guidance they need to be successful.
I see Mentorship as one piece of the puzzle in newcomer onboarding. Mentors provide a point of contact, welcome newcomers, answer questions, and perhaps even offer positive reinforcement. As you’ve mentioned, another important piece of that puzzle is moderating edits and providing newcomers with constructive feedback when they have made edits that are harmful or poor-quality.
We have tools to help with both of those needs:
Screenshot of Mentorship filters in Recent Changes
  • From the Mentor Dashboard, mentors can access an overview of their mentees, including a quick view of edits, reverts, and blocks.
  • From Recent Changes and Watchlist, moderators have access to filters to help them narrow down to potentially problematic edits. Moderators can filter edits based on “content quality predictions” and “user intent predictions” as well as by user type: Newcomers, Learners, or even unregistered users. Mentors even have the ability to filter to only see edits from their Mentees.
I don’t believe there is a current expectation on English Wikipedia that mentors should patrol the edits of their mentees. However, it’s really up to each wiki to decide what works best for them and how to utilize tools for newcomer moderation and mentorship.  On the Growth side, we recognize that each wiki is unique and one solution isn’t right for all wikis, so as much as possible we are trying to build out tools that are flexible enough to be configured by communities (here’s English Wikipedia Growth Configuration, for example).  Growth tools were built for every Wikipedia in the world, and some language versions are quite different from English Wikipedia. For example, some communities don’t have a Teahouse for newcomers. And some already had alternate versions of mentorship in use, so the Growth Mentorship feature is turned off.
Along with configurable tools for newcomer onboarding, the Growth team is hoping to also provide communities with more data about newcomers, so more data-driven decisions can be made. Just this week we extended the Growth KPIs to include more data, including metrics on the number of questions asked by mentees, and revert metrics for each Suggested Edit task type (notice that you can filter by wiki and adjust the time range).
All that being said, we are constantly improving and adding to Growth features to better suit the needs of communities, so please let me know how you think Mentorship, or the Growth features in general, might be changed or extended to address the problems you see. Do you think that increasing the number of newcomers who are assigned a mentor would help?  What improvements or tools are needed to help ensure newcomers get the attention they need? What tools do mentors need to make their work more efficient, effective, and enjoyable? KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:31, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

ARoseWolf, the thing is, it's a problem that needs a solution. Shrugging it off with "Policing mentees edits is not something the mentorship program was really designed for" or something similar is not the best thing to do. Especially for a member of Growth Team. Remember, we're here to improve Wikipedia, and the problem won't go away by itself. Adjusting existing mentorship guidelines and techniques is certainly one of the ways to deal with it. There are also other ways, e.g. writing an edit analyzer which would report suspicious edits so an admin can take a closer look and cut it short in time, preventing further damage.

I'm currently thinking of submitting formal proposals at Village Pump to address this issue, but since I didn't do it before, some guidance from more experienced people would be nice. Is it sufficient to describe the problem, provide relevant links, and suggest that supervision of an editor with problematic activity looks like a solution which will work (and something as short for edit analyzer)? Or should it be more elaborate? Perhaps we can work on a draft all together prior to submitting it? 188.66.34.165 (talk) 04:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

IP editor, I think the disconnect is that you're describing something outside the current scope of this program (except perhaps in the previous definition of mentorship, which may be closer to what you were originally referring to; the mentorship program as it stands currently is something of a newer development on Wikipedia, and there have been different programs with the same name in the past). We have other efforts, such as Recent changes patrollers and the CVU, aimed at monitoring changes to articles. Mentors are closer to mini Teahouse hosts, there to answer questions when newcomers have them. Re edit analyzer, are you thinking of something similar to an edit filter? Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 05:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Perfect4th, I don't quite understand what you mean by disconnect. If you are implying the damage could be caught by edit filters (yes, they look like exactly what I had in mind and thought didn't exist yet), RCP, CVU, CVN, SVT, ... you are right, it could – but the fact is, it wasn't. It stopped when I spotted one edit by chance and asked the user to stop damaging WP after checking his/her history. What it means in my opinion is that we should seek ways to fix it without pointing fingers at others, and it surely concerns Growth Team as well.

If anything, there's an obvious and clear disconnect between VickyBenz and his/her mentor, who is still nowhere to be seen. ARoseWolf mentioned that currently all new accounts are assigned a mentor. Can we please know who is VickyBenz's? Is it Rasnaboy who posted welcome screen one or two days after the issue was raised at Teahouse and cleanup was nearly complete by people who clearly have better things to do? Or was even welcome msg posted by a responsible passer-by rather than assigned mentor?

That being said, the VickyBenz case with damage overseen by everyone and non-existent mentor-mentee communication shows that
a) there's essentially zero benefit from mentorship the way it's currently organized; questions are better asked at Teahouse or Help Desk anyway, as there's more chance to get a quick reply and
b) there are no effective measures in place for quick detection and prevention of content damage (intentional or not – doesn't matter). And Growth Team with its own responsibilities is clearly involved as well. A better thought out and more responsible mentorship is *alone* capable of preventing such incidents. To be clear: by "mentorship" I mean not specific set of current rules, techniques and guidelines, but guidance in general.

I'd also like to address the statement "Asking them to "watch" their mentees edits and possibly revert damage, while a suggestion in good faith and well meaning, is a bit much. I tried that just to see if it was possible and its not, not if you want to still edit yourself." While I fully understand the reasoning, mentorship limited to answering questions is essentially useless, I'm absolutely convinced. Besides, I'm convinced everyone should better concentrate on what one both enjoys and is good at; good editors should not be distracted with mentoring, good mentors should not be distracted with editing. These tasks have rather different essential skill sets and most fitting personality types; I think there are very few people who are really good at both. And for a mentor who is not distracted with editing, watching mentees' edits is not a distraction, but part of the task.

The last but not the least, I strongly suggest that you folks should never let out of mind people who, instead of doing productive work, clean up mess left by users like VickyBenz, which could be cut short by watching mentors or admins (I did my part, a very small bit, others did much more). It takes *much less* effort to watch edits of problematic users and revert them immediately, avoiding build-up of mess, than to clean up afterwards. It's *total* effort spent by community which is the goal worth pursuing, not effort of Growth Team alone, or any other individual team or task force, for that matter. And this is another strong reason why I'm fully convinced some adjustments are necessary and would like to submit relevant proposals – with contribution from you or without.

Anyway, can we please know who is the person with overall responsibility for decisions of Growth Team and the general direction the team is taking? One of WMF employees who regularly post here according to history? I think it's best for this person to join this thread and at least state whether, in his or her opinion, any adjustments are needed or everything is fine and is best left as is. Strong leadership at all levels with clear vision for what is needed to make things better is a precondition for success after all, and Wikipedia is no exception, despite the way it's fundamentally organized and operated. 188.66.34.165 (talk) 13:38, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Have you tried watching every edit 155+ editors make and evaluate whether each edit is productive or damaging? There are 80 mentors and there will be fewer if this becomes a requirement. This is a volunteer program. Every mentor is also an editor and we would like to actually edit and participate in discussions too. There aren't enough hours in a day for what you are suggesting that volunteers do. Tracking every mentee and their edits to verify they are acting in good faith is as impossible as saying that admins should monitor all edits and stop all vandalism as it happens. If that were the case we wouldn't need AIV. --ARoseWolf 14:06, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi @188.66.34.165, while I understand the issue you're trying to flag, I have to second what @ARoseWolf is saying. If I were to double check every edit my mentees have made I would (a) have no time for anything else (b) stop mentoring, as that's not what I signed up for. And to be clear, I have done a few mass cleanups of a users edits, so I know what the issue can grow into. Re:other points: a) there's essentially zero benefit from mentorship the way it's currently organized; questions are better asked at Teahouse or Help Desk anyway, as there's more chance to get a quick reply -- I disagree. They serve different purposes, don't really overlap, and offer meaningfully different ways to onboard new editors into interaction with other more experienced editors. What you're asking for is a full on tutoring for all new users, which is fundamentally impossible given the numbers we're working with. good editors should not be distracted with mentoring, good mentors should not be distracted with editing ... I think there are very few people who are really good at both -- I think there are very few people who are here at all, doing either, so breaking it up more only hurts us all. Alyo (chat·edits) 15:01, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
We don't have enough experienced volunteers to patrol all newcomer edits, no matter through what feature or programme or distribution of labour. As such, this should not be a target. It never has been. We've always grown through newcomers finding their feet for themselves with intervention by other editors as and when they notice their edits, and it was only through this that the articles you see on the site were written.
Given that we have tens of thousands of irredeemably awful articles in mainspace and many more that are okay but have substantial issues, I don't think our main concern should be small, well-intentioned edits by newcomers that make something slightly worse. There's a steep enough learning curve to the site, and most acceptable-quality articles should be on volunteers' watchlists so that we can undo the unproductive edits we do see. Instead, our main priority is getting more experienced volunteers, which means getting out word that we're massively short on volunteers (to get newcomers), and welcoming and helping the people who do start editing (so newcomers become experienced).
188.66...'s hostile talk page messages are exactly what not to do, as they will scare off good faith contributors. — Bilorv (talk) 18:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
The Growth Team develops tools to help new users get started. These tools are designed for general tasks, and it is virtually impossible to create guided tasks for every situation, every question... That's why one of the proposed tools is to have access to a mentor. This mentor is able to answer most of the questions, or find out where the answer is. The Growth team provides tools to meet the efforts of most mentors, and those who wish to actively patrol their assigned mentees can do so. But the Growth Team does not force anyone to patrol like this. What mentors are responsible for is up to each community. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Broader view of the problem and a small poll

First off, thank you Kirsten and Benoit for joining. Please don't consider my lack of response to you after asking to do so as a sign of disrespect, I've been simply too busy of late to take time for a thoughtful post. Current 150-ish mentee/mentor ratio mentioned by someone is high enough that close supervision of newcomers is perceived as unrealistic by some people, but clearly, there's a huge difference between two poles, whether most of the 86 volunteers consider mentoring as something of a side and not very interesting job on one hand, or something most of them want to dedicate themselves to on the other. Quite frankly, I don't see what the problem is in the latter case, except if most newcomers are very high-volume producers of problematic edits, all of which need revertion or correction. How representative is VickyBenz case? I don't believe that share of newcomers with activity pattern of this user is close to 100%; is there a way to get some important stats like percentage of newbies' reverted edits, their activity statistics etc., so we talk hard numbers?

Second, I'm a firm believer that mentorship is one of the most important – and underappreciated – avenues to making Wikipedia better. After reading replies I got a feeling that some people have a very narrow and formal view of it: signing up to the program and complying with whatever formal requirements the program contains. That is certainly one way to see the world, but in my opinion, being a mentor is more of a state of mind and personality type thing. You simply don't become a mentor by signing up; you either feel it's important and do what you can on a regular daily basis, or not. I personally never signed up for any mentorship program, and yet I do some mentoring even in my edit descriptions when I think it can help others learn.

I'd like to specifically address a comment by Bilorv:

"Given that we have tens of thousands of irredeemably awful articles in mainspace and many more that are okay but have substantial issues, I don't think our main concern should be small, well-intentioned edits by newcomers that make something slightly worse. ... [agree with the omitted part] Instead, our main priority is getting more experienced volunteers, which means getting out word that we're massively short on volunteers (to get newcomers), and welcoming and helping the people who do start editing (so newcomers become experienced). 188.66...'s hostile talk page messages are exactly what not to do, as they will scare off good faith contributors. "

Good-faith contributors who damage content need an explanation as to what they do, it's vandals who don't. Apart from this note, while perfectly logical on the surface, I think it's a great example of a failure to see the big picture: the dominance of low-quality content is *direct* consequence of neglecting the significance of properly educating newcomers for years, because for high-quality content WP:CIR. And close contact of newcomers with experienced editor(s) in the early stages of getting around Wikipedia is crucial for personal growth of newcomers as editors and gaining essential skills. I think there's huge difference in what kind of editor a newcomer grows into depending on what company of fellow editors and, therefore, editing practices he or she lands in during the starting period, or whether a newbie edits in full solitude for months. It doesn't even matter *who* passes on proper editing practice: a dedicated mentor or more experienced editor(s), what really matters is what kind of editing culture a newbie acquires upon joining, as it's this culture which he or she will propagate in the future.

If significance of properly "schooling" newcomers keeps being neglected, Wikipedia is simply doomed to remain as it is – full of harmful activity, undesired and ineffective editing and, as a result, poor-quality content for the most part. I think effective corrective measures are long overdue, and Bilorv's mindset and advice is a perfect recipe to hold Wikipedia back forever. Quantity doesn't beat quality, not in this particular case, Bilorv. I'd hazard a guess that the reason why Wikipedia was off to a fairly good start, is the big gap in overall competence and expertise between many people who edit these years and the Nupedia folks who made the kernel of the *very small* yet productive community in the early days along with first-wave newcomers, who were mostly computer and web geeks. Situation today is totally different.

One more piece of advice I could give you, Growth Team, is to take a broader view of the problem: please don't limit your work to how to organize mentorship best. A couple of things, which seem to be very easy to implement in a short time, occur to me as steps in the right direction. One is automatic posting of welcome screen upon registration, so every newcomer with account is given all important links and root pages for self-education. Why is it not done 20+ years since Wikipedia was started (according to VickyBenz's talk page history)? Was it discussed and rejected by community for some reason? I'd really like to know the reason why.

The other thing is, I have vague recollections that a game was written to teach Wikipedia in an entertaining manner; I never played it, it just sprang from memory as I'm typing this up. I think it was an excellent idea and newbies should be automatically given a link to it along with welcome screen (or in it). I'm a big believer in edutainment in general, and I think a well-written game would be a great asset in helping newbies learn. It could also be an ever-evolving project like many open-source games, so people could get back to it in a few months to learn something new in a fun way.

And one more: why not start paying people who are capable of providing high-quality mentorship and would be willing to concentrate on this task alone? It was not an option in the early days due to lack of funds, but with donations currently at $153 million (and total income at $163 million) per annum and growing, I think this is one of the best uses of donors' money (a very small share, obviously).

That's my two cents for now folks, please give it a thought, comment if you wish, and please post what other changes, in your opinion, can help newcomers learn desired and effective editing. Let's have a poll. 188.66.33.41 (talk) 17:21, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I think paying volunteers is a dangerous game that would cause the erosion of Wikipedia's values: there's a reason Everipedia wasn't going to work. I value the education of newcomers, otherwise I wouldn't be signed up as a mentor with my threshold on double and have 291 Teahouse edits and 134 Help desk edits, and leave more detailed comments than the minimum standard at my hundreds of AFC reviews. However, your comment still overlooks the practicality: with only 10% of newcomers receiving mentor features, there are still too few mentors to do the sort of intensive feedback you are asking of. Moreover, your own example of feedback given was a rude and off-putting message likely to drive an editor (who was not a CIR case) from the site.
I believe you're thinking of The Wikipedia Adventure with the "game ... to teach Wikipedia" and though I believe some research did not find a statistically significant effect, I did like it, actually used it myself as a newcomer, and believe we should still be promoting it. — Bilorv (talk) 20:28, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
I've written before about the idea of active mentorship—I've put some excerpts at User:Isaacl/Community/Fostering collaborative behaviour § Active mentorship for new editors. I do strongly suspect that due to the amount of effort required, it would have to be done by full-time paid staff. (I would envision the community doing the legwork of selecting the staff, with the Wikimedia Foundation providing HR support and funding.) To date, the community hasn't shown much interest in hiring staffers, though, for various reasons. isaacl (talk) 21:13, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Positive reinforcement has been proven to be a good way to encourage people to continue editing, along with guidance and onboarding. Mentorship helps creating this positive reinforcement effect, by giving newcomers a contact with an experienced user who can encourage them. This goes along with good guidance and a place where to start editing (both provided at special:Homepage).
The Growth team works on increasing positive reinforcement, our efforts are focusing on rewarding newcomers for quality edits, and we are also expecting to have mentors to be more involved. The latter effort is made because we observed that mentors don't know about Special:MentorDashboard, and the use of RecentChanges filters to highlight their mentees' edits.
Regarding welcome messages, most wikis have decided to distribute them no matter if the user has edited or not (as we do with mentors). It is up to English Wikipedia to change this (and the message can be sighed by the mentor as well).
The Wikipedia Adventure is a nice way to discover Wikipedia, but Growth Suggested Edits are more efficient at helping newcomers to make a good first edit, and continuing editing.
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
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