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Meeting #3

17:00 UTC works for me, and I like the idea of rotating the meeting schedule. Thursdays are best for me if possible. I'm happy to give you all the whole hour to share ideas with the Growth team if you prefer, but if you are interested, I think it would be interesting to bring someone from the Editing Team in to demo their current Edit Check plans. T265163. One idea the Editing team is exploring is around surfacing guidance within Visual Editor when an editor is adding text that likely needs a citation. I know the Editing team is eager to collect more community feedback about this project, and I also think a citation-related "Edit Check" could somehow integrate into new article creation eventually (which is fairly similar to some of the ideas we've been discussing). Anyway, let me know if you are interested in spending part of the meeting discussing Edit Check, and I'll arrange that. Does anyone have thoughts on when they would like to meet next? 17:00 UTC / 9AM Pacific on February 23? March 9? KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:42, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The Feb 23 date works better for my calendar. Happy to hear other thoughts.
A reminder to volunteers that I'd really like to move the brainstorming to on-wiki and do it ahead of the meeting, and then use meeting time for software proposals. Let's maximize the opportunity we have here by doing the brainstorming and planning pre-meeting, if possible. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Feb. 23 also works better for me, although I could likely make either. Discussing Edit Check for part of it works for me! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:18, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
A reminder to everyone that our 3rd meeting is potentially in 2 weeks. What concrete software proposal should we present in the meeting? Who can help lead the brainstorming and discussion of this onwiki? @BusterD, are you available? –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:23, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
I am all in. Mentioned a few odd things to Sdkb. Would like to be more productive this time. Do we want to create a new page-place for the brainstorm? Is the talkspace already available? BusterD (talk) 09:45, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
A section of this page might be good since we all have it watchlisted. Starting up quickly would be beneficial. Another good option might be WT:NPPR to get a wider audience. Your idea of a new page would also be acceptable. Thoughts? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:14, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Agree that urgency is a concern. Let's do it here. I'm busy this morning. Would you drive this conversation at first? I'm happy to join in when I get back this afternoon. BusterD (talk) 17:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@BusterD @Novem Linguae @Sdkb @Clovermoss Thanks for helping organize in advance! Let's finalize a date and time and I'll share out a meeting link. I just found out that Feb 23 won't work for the Editing team, so we can't have the Edit Check discussion that day. Do you prefer to move our meeting to March 9 or March 16 (at 17:00 UTC) so we can also include the Product Manager and Designer of the Editing team, or should we proceed with Feb 23rd and schedule the Edit Check demo for another time? KStoller-WMF (talk) 19:16, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm very eager to see a demo of Edit Check, but I view it as something that complements the Article Creation for New Editors project, not something inextricable from it, so I'd be fine proceeding with the Feb. 23 meeting and having the demo another time. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:05, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
I'd suggest putting the next meeting on hold until we do our homework and create an actionable software proposal.
Folks, do we want to focus on Sdkb's software proposal (and maybe they'd be willing to lead the next meeting), or do we want to brainstorm some more? –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:42, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
I certainly don't expect a polished proposal, but I would prefer to have an agenda finalized prior to meeting. So perhaps it's best if we push back the meeting until that is settled? KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:15, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Hello @BusterD @Novem Linguae @Sdkb @Clovermoss @MB and @Sage (Wiki Ed), Since we don't have an agenda finalized, I've moved out the date of our third meeting until Thursday, March 9 at 17 UTC. Will that work for those of you who want to attend?
As for finalizing an agenda: The Editing team can join and demo their current Edit check plans (T265163). They are still early on in this project and eager to get feedback from experienced moderators. And I'm eager to hear if you think this project could be extended to new article creation in a way that will address some of the problems discussed around Article creation for new editors. Edit check certainly won't address all of the issues we've discussed (or are covered in Sdkb's Vision for a better Article Wizard), but it seems like a step in the right direction.
We could spend the whole hour focusing on Edit check if no one else wants to add to the agenda, but I certainly want to allow space for you all to share your ideas as well. What other topic or topics should I add to the agenda? - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:56, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF, that sounds good. I think it might be helpful to add some space in the agenda for you or someone else on the WMF side to walk us through any design/conceptual thinking you've done since the last meeting, and for us to discuss any decision points that you're facing or will face soon (what the minimum viable prototype would be might be one such point). Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:23, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Sure, I'm happy to do that! I won't have any designs or concrete plans to share yet, but I can share where we are at in the annual planning process and discuss upcoming decision points. - KStoller-WMF (talk) 02:18, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
The time and date work for me. I was reading this link today and we are moving in the correct direction, I believe. BusterD (talk) 03:35, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1678381203 for timezone conversion –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@BusterD @Novem Linguae @Sdkb @Clovermoss @MB @Sage (Wiki Ed) and anyone else interested in attending the next meeting, here's what I'm suggesting:
Agenda:
  • Introductions (~5 mins)
  • Kirsten: Quick Product & Technology annual planning intro + potential future Growth projects + Q&A (~10 minutes)
  • Peter & Nicolas: Edit check demo + Q&A + feedback (~35 minutes)
Meeting Goals:
  • Share an overview of where we are at in Product & Technology annual planning along with a quick overview some of the projects and priorities the Growth team is considering in the coming year.
  • Equip volunteers with the context they need about Edit check to:
    • Identify things that could go wrong/might not work
    • Learn what questions and ideas this project brings up
    • Name implicit assumptions we need to hold ourselves accountable for validating
  • Prepare this group to have future discussions about how Edit check might complement (or be extended) to address some of the Article creation for newcomer ideas this group is brainstorming.
How does that sound? - KStoller-WMF (talk) 03:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Sounds good to me! I've already heard about Edit Check at that team's meeting the other day, but happy to discuss it more/talk about how it might apply here. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:06, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

February pre-meeting brainstorm

What should we attempt to achieve this month? What shovel-ready projects do we need to move forward now? What decision points are we approaching? Would anyone like to hear about my experiences with new page creator Elttaruuu (talk · contribs · logs) (three weeks and almost 1000 edits in)? BusterD (talk) 17:11, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Lessons from Elttaruuu

@BusterD, on the vision for a better article wizard, I may have a little catch-up to do as I missed the last meeting. But I'll be interested in hearing from the folks on the WMF side about what sort of discussions they've been having. Are there elements of the vision that the team thinks would be infeasible, or that are missing, or that should be changed somehow? I know Kirsten asked above about a minimum viable product, so I'll be interested to discuss our options there, as that seems like a potential upcoming decision point.
On your experiences with Elttaruuu, yeah, I think it'd probably be good for the WMF to have some practical examples to reference as they move forward; Clovermoss can also share some of the ones she has collected. Personally, I feel I have a fairly good understanding of the newcomer article creation experience from my own past work, but more information there certainly never hurts! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:26, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
If you are looking at Elttaruuu, then you should not only be looking at the successes but also at articles which perhaps surprisingly have been removed from article space and either deleted or draftified. This is not a pleasant or helpful experience for a new contributor.--Ipigott (talk) 20:45, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
We are totally in agreement. Without getting into the weeds, IMHO their problems stemmed from 1) an unreasonable expectation of notability and 2) an unfamiliarity with workable processes. The user is smart, quick, and enthusiastic. Boldness is not a problem. At first, I'll grant, their work didn't impress reviewers because their early edits seemed experienced and their subjects so local and obscure that it implied connected editing. So they were good at the work, but reviewers including myself failed the AGF test. Clearly having your work removed or moved is confusing, but learning requires stumbling around a bit, reacting to various sorts of feedback. Humans learn best by doing. Elttaruuu succeeds perhaps because they can weather the foibles and are willing to accept feedback at face value. BusterD (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Bilorv idea

@Bilorv's idea above looks promising. To recap, their idea is when a new user creates an article, pop up a dialog that collects some basic info... 1) ask "what is your connection to the article?" to look for COI/UPE, and 2) ask for 3 sources.
So ideas to be worked out: a) what information to collect? b) where to display this information to reviewers? c) who to collect this information from, e.g. first article creation attempt only? not extendedconfirmed only? etc. d) make this step optional or mandatory, e.g. are they able to press a "skip" button? e) could this pass a Village Pump RFC? –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Sdkb idea

The Vision for a better Article Wizard is well-considered, and I can't see any specific point with which I disagree. (Kindly remember my preference for "article sherpa" as a non-magical assistant. There's nothing magical about a new contributor's tasks and I want to give no undue illusions to the eager newcomer.) It might be made out to be good fun. It occurred to me that the framework of the Wizard is not unlike a game of combat, the player required to beat each opponent in order to advance to the next stage. If we can channel a user's natural skepticism and agency in a mock contest (Did anyone besides myself just adore the tutorials in Myth: The Fallen Lords? Crickets? Okay. I'm a mature nerd.) we might make creating a new page channeling intrinsic willingness to compete into a new game you play on your phone. "Can you pass the dragon of notability? Dare you risk the final battle: deletion procedure?" BusterD (talk) 20:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It might alternatively be posed as flash-like game of Bob the Robber, a contributor must visit each room and complete certain key tasks in order to unlock (and unlock is a useful metaphor here) the next level of achievement. BusterD (talk) 20:38, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I hope it doesn't seem I've gone down a rabbit hole. I'm conceptualizing how to utilize a new contributor's native determination and stubbornness in their own favor. BusterD (talk) 20:50, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Looking over User:Sdkb/sandbox/Vision for a better Article Wizard, this looks like a replacement for the WP:AW. Would we want this to be done in the same style as the current WP:AW, or as software (e.g. a MediaWiki extension)? Is this something we should be asking the Growth Team to make for us, or doing ourselves? What kinds of features does it have that might be technically complicated to implement? And could we get a consensus at WT:AW and the village pump to replace the current article wizard, or is the current wizard well-liked? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:42, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Re naming, that's a good thought, BusterD. We definitely want to give new editors a realistic expectation of the challenges involved, so we should consider alternatives. For article sherpa, I'd have to ponder/research a bit if there are any appropriation issues vis a vis the Sherpa people, but if not, that could be a more interesting one than just something like "article helper".
Novem Linguae, in order to have the desired functionality, I don't think it would be possible to make the Wizard just using wikitext, so we'd have to have the Growth Team code it as software. That said, retaining the ability of the community to maintain/control it will be essential. As a cautionary tale, one of the ways the Wikipedia Adventure fell short is that its advanced technical elements and sophisticated graphics made it very hard for us to update/improve it. For here, some community control is baked in with e.g. the article topic tree, and for other elements (like the copyright disclaimer in step 6 or the post-decline help screens in step 9) we'd want to make sure the team builds in a way for us to modify the text.
Regarding getting consensus, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think there's any cadre of editors devoted to the current wizard, so I don't foresee it being all that hard to get consensus to switch to something else if we put forward a clearly superior alternative.
Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:35, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
From my perspective, @Sdkb's Vision for a better Article Wizard is solid and makes sense. But I want to acknowledge that as it's currently detailed, it would be a very large project. The Growth team attempts to build features that are community configurable, so communities have control and can customize Growth features to their unique needs. Building a new, detailed Article Wizard that is configurable by non-technical admins would be a major undertaking. For a project this large, I would want the Growth team to do user research and prototype testing with newcomers interested in article creation. I would also want to conduct more discussions with communities and evaluate this project against other potential projects (like engagement emails, user profile work, and a copyedit structured task).
None of that is to say we shouldn't consider this effort, I just want to make sure I'm setting expectations clearly, and encouraging us to work in an agile way. Is there a MVP version of this we should consider? Are there two or three steps that are most important that we could start with? Do you think that a reference / notability check (like this community wishlist proposal) would be a good place to start? Will the Editing team's upcoming Edit check project complement this work or should we somehow consider extending that effort to article creation?
I don't expect anyone to have all of those answers for me, but figured I should share some of the things I've been mulling over. Please let me know if you have any thoughts! KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:54, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

An elephant in the room

(Taking a liberty to characterize this. I don't mean to derail the above discussion.) The recent failed RfA of our friend User:MB has cast a pale light on the rigor of new page patrolling. Even though MB had seemingly done nothing against policy, the many thousands of perfectly reasonable review and review-necessitated edits they had performed over the years were seen to be in friction with a vocal subset of editors who wanted even further extension of good faith and effort on the part of new page reviewers in each discrete process. If I were an admin candidate, or a newer contributor who had the calling, I'd avoid NPP like the plague after that unfortunate admin run. While it's not directly relevant to today's effort, I think it essential we note that this friction has recently (and hopefully momentarily) cost us the efforts of two vital individual editors, perhaps more. We should not shy away from this fact. For our current mission's own protection, I think it vital we keep our process fully transparent, and be seen as keeping our process fully transparent. Any VP RFC would need to be crafted artfully and narrowly, perhaps introduced in stages over time in order to mine consensus. BusterD (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

There are differences in opinion on this. I know one respected admin has expressed the opinion that the MB RFA was not an anti-NPP pile-on, and that other factors were at play. I have some opinions on this that I'd be willing to discuss via email. But your main point is well-heard: whatever software we propose here needs to have strong community consensus, and we should be transparent about our development process, and involve as many folks as possible. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:46, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
P.S. I have posted a link to this discussion at WT:NPPR to help solicit ideas. Are we also ready to post something at the village pump, or should we hold off? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:50, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I hope we're brainstorming towards best ideas before rushing off for approval. When we have best ideas we can put some forward for the peanut gallery. BusterD (talk) 20:53, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Mentor Dashboard improvements: sending encouragement and appreciation to new editors

As part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project, we plan to add a new module to the MentorDashboard.

This module will surface mentees that match certain criteria. For instance, in the screenshot, you will notice a mentee who made 20 edits total and has no reverts over the last 48 hours. Some of these parameters can be changed in the module’s settings. We also display some other user metrics like thanks received and "Longest streak" of days edited in a row.

Then, Mentors are invited to “Send appreciation” to this new editor (possibly after reviewing their edits or talk page).

These messages of appreciation may be prefilled with a default message (which can be customized in settings). You can edit this message before posting, as we will redirect you to the newcomer’s talk page to post the message.

Multiple studies have found that newcomers’ editing activity is increased when they receive thanks and other positive messages about their work from an experienced editor or mentor [1].  We designed this module with the hope that it will improve new editor retention with a minimal time-investment from Mentors.

Our questions to you about this design are:

  • Would this new module encourage you to send appreciation to your mentees?
  • If you had to provide appreciation to this mentee, do you have all the information you need to decide to praise this user?
  • Do you think some Mentors will hesitate to “Send appreciation” because it’s not clear that there is an additional step (visit the talk page and confirm message) after clicking that button?
  • Do you have any comments or suggestions regarding this feature?

Settings:

We want this new module to work for everyone, so we plan to make the settings configurable by Mentors.

First, you can define the number of edits within a given time frame a newcomer needs to make to be suggested as praiseworthy.

Then you can define the default message that will be used when you send praise to the newcomer. Both the subject and the content of the message can be pre-defined.

Finally, you can decide to get a notification when a mentee matches your selection settings.

Our questions to you:

  • Is the edit time frame setting enough to cover your needs to find mentees to praise?
  • Should we provide a pre-defined message you can edit later?
  • Would you use notifications to be informed of a new mentee to be praised?
  • Is there a setting you’d like to see in the module’s settings?


Thanks in advance to anyone willing to provide feedback!  :) KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

@KStoller-WMF, Would this new module encourage you to send appreciation to your mentees? Probably yes, if I found that it was consistently surfacing mentees who deserved to be praised.
If you had to provide appreciation to this mentee, do you have all the information you need to decide to praise this user? Not really. Having lots of recent edits just means they're active. That could be good...or it could mean they're prioritizing quantity over quality, or jumping in over their head, or a returning sock. Thanks received is a little more useful, but I'd want to see what they're being thanked for. Right now, that's extremely difficult, because of T51087 (I notice you recently subscribed to it!). Lastly, a streak is again just an indication of activity, and in that case not having too many real-life obligations haha.
Before praising anyone, I'd want to check out both their edit history, to see for myself what their activity is, and their user talk page, to check what others have said to them. Keep in mind that, when I choose to praise someone, I'm staking a small bit of my reputation on their work. I'm signaling to other experienced editors who might check their user talk that I approve of what they're doing, and if it turns out that they're causing tons of disruption, that'll be a mild embarrassment.
Do you think some Mentors will hesitate to “Send appreciation” because it’s not clear that there is an additional step (visit the talk page and confirm message) after clicking that button? Not really. I'd expect there to be some sort of confirmation step after clicking that button. A tool that makes an edit on your behalf without confirming first would be a huge change.
Do you have any comments or suggestions regarding this feature? I think the key factor in whether this succeeds or not is whether or not it's good at surfacing newcomers who deserve praise. I do like the concept, in that, because newcomers aren't going to know the criteria causing them to be surfaced for potential praise, it avoids some of the gamification issues we've been concerned about elsewhere.
Is the edit time frame setting enough to cover your needs to find mentees to praise? Not sure; I'd have to try it out.
Should we provide a pre-defined message you can edit later? Good question. Templated messages, especially if poorly crafted, often feel a lot less personal. Then again, it might help other experienced editors to be able to more readily see that a piece of feedback left on a newcomer's talk page came from the feature.
Would you use notifications to be informed of a new mentee to be praised? Personally, no. I see notifications as being alerts for things that actively need my attention, not for optional invitations to tasks I might want to do. This is in the latter bucket.
Is there a setting you’d like to see in the module’s settings? I can't immediately think of anything.
Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
@Sdkb - thank you so much for the thorough feedback here! I definitely agree with you that this feature will only be successful if it's actually surfacing newcomers that actually deserve praise and encouragement!
I asked an engineer to run an example list of users who might appear as praiseworthy on English Wikipedia: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P44929. All Mentors are included in that list if others want to check it out.
The real feature will only surface newcomers based on Mentor settings and what Mentor's consider "praiseworthy," so this is just an example. But in this example, you can see 13 of your mentees currently make it onto that list. How relevant is that list?
One thing I'm noticing is that many of those accounts aren't super new users. Do you think that's a problem? KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:41, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF, I took a look at the first three mentees in my list, Morscho, Toomuchcuriosity, and Stashua123, spending about 2 minutes each checking out their talk page and edit history. And looks like 3/3 hits 🎉 — these all seem like relative newcomers doing quiet, productive work. They've each been around for a few months, but they don't really have praise (or in some cases activity beyond a welcome at all) on their talk page, so it seems like an excellent moment to offer that. Getting one's first piece of personal recognition can be a significant moment in one's editing — I remember my first Barnstar, and reactions like this from @The Quirky Kitty the other day are common when I have the pleasure to give others their first.
At some point, an editor might be experienced enough that the recognition would be not appropriate or even patronizing. (@Barkeep49 has been at the top of my mentee dashboard since it launched, and while they're doing great work, their awards cabinet is plenty full already 😛) But I don't think that'd be the case here.
So overall, from my brief look, it seems you're on the right track. I'm curious if others who have time to check out more names on the lists are coming to a similar conclusion. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
I think I'm going to stick around. But yes that's a good suggestion. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
I think Sdkb hits on an important theme: mentors need to feel motivated and rewarded by investing this time. Put another way, we need to motivate the mentors to motivate their mentees. Even if the tool does an excellent job of surfacing mentees there will likely still be time mentors want to spend looking at their contributions. As such having a template, editable before being delivered, for communications - perhaps editable on a per mentor basis - feels important as well. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 thanks for the feedback! @Trizek (WMF) and I have also been discussing this challenge: how we don't currently have a great system for rewarding or recognizing Mentors. Mentorship is valuable work done by skilled contributors and it takes time away from other important work. Maybe a monthly barnstar or WikiLove awarded by the Growth team could be a place to start, but that might not scale well to all language versions with Mentorship. Do you have any suggestions for how we could "motivate the mentors to motivate their mentees"?
As for your feedback about having a template: I agree, we want to make this as quick and easy for mentors as possible (while also making sure the messages feel personalized and not like bot responses). So unless we run into technical challenges, we hope to provide a template that can be both personalized by mentor and editable before delivery. KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
I agree that it may be hard to get mentors to take on extra work to find specific reasons to recognize editors (in spite of my suggestion to have a list of ideas for recognition, which would require more work). I don't know how to address this: the mentor-to-assigned-editor ratio just seems too low to sustain anything more than interacting with a handful of editors. I appreciate that your team is trying to address this using automated methods to find good work to recognize. Maybe a trained AI model would be able to identify editors who can best benefit from some praise. isaacl (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Mentors recognition is a difficult part.
Immediate recognition can be done if you notice a nice way to reply to someone, or if you appreciate the dedication of a given mentor. Also, it might be possible to have a bot who lists most active mentors, by number of questions answered. Then the top 3 mentors could get a reward.
Do you know that each mentor has a mentor? Maybe there is something to do around this. :) Should we add an option to find most active mentors?
At the moment, for most communities, it is not rewarding to be a mentor, while being on another role (patroller, maintainer, etc.) can give you social credit; at most places, they are typically bonuses if you apply to be an admin. It is not something we can work on, as a technical solution wouldn't fit here. But if communities consider to change their culture, in order to increase mentors' involvement recognition, it would definitely be an helpful move. It might take time, but it would be well spent time.
Whatever communities will start experimenting on this topic, we'd love to hear about it. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
My comments on an AI model were still along the lines of helping mentors find editors to recognize in order to reduce their workload, but certainly it's a concept that could be generalized to help identify all sorts of good work. (One of the Editor of the Week examples is "Serving as a notable voice of reason in discussions with other editors.") In paid working environments, regular feedback sessions can help management be aware of those who contribute through teaching and mentorship, particularly when those being helped provide positive feedback. Perhaps there could be a user dashboard that indexes thank you notes that were left on their talk page, and provides counts of thanks left manually and via the thanks feature. A bot could help create a list of those with notable levels of positive feedback left over some rolling period of time, and this could be used by others to decide on providing some recognition. isaacl (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Rather than having a full message that can optionally be selected by the mentor as their default, I suggest having a list of ideas for the types of behaviour and actions that ought to be acknowledged. This will give mentors a starting point, while letting them craft a specific message appropriate for the editor in question. isaacl (talk) 16:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Interesting idea! We wanted to keep the initial release of this feature fairly simple to start, but that's certainly something we could consider in the future. Can you elaborate or give examples? Are you thinking something like a list of behaviors we want to encourage, similar to Barnstar reasons, but more newcomer-centric? KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I was thinking that rather than giving a "fill-in-the-blanks" template for appreciation, there would be a list of desirable behaviours and actions for editors, with an emphasis on ones related to ramping up their experience with the community. Mentors could look at an editors contributions in light of these items, and they might trigger other ideas of valuable efforts to recognize. It's a theme I worked on including as part of the Editor of the Week recognition. There are a few examples listed on that page, but for newcomers, I think collaborative behaviour and a constructive approach are important to recognize, such as participating in talk page discussions as needed, communicating well with others in discussions to reach consensus agreement, and showing consideration for the viewpoints of others. Improvements in technical ability can also be recognized, such as learning to cite changes with appropriate templates. In addition, there's what I called "sustained patterns of excellence" in the guidance for Editor of the Week: in general, if you see someone consistently doing something laudable that improves Wikipedia or helps others, it's something worth a quick "good job!".
On a somewhat related note, from my experience with recognition programs, the more specific the recognition, the more the recipient appreciates it. Thus whether or not a template is used, I feel it's important for the recognizer to be as specific as possible when describing the reasons for the recognition. It would be good to encourage this. isaacl (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
I like the thought of leaving a more personalized note of appreciation and recognition for mentees. However, I am a bit of an eccentric person and quite the enigma of sorts and I understand that it might not work for everyone the same way so I'd be okay to pick from a list or just create my own. Like Isaacl I do believe the more specific we can be about the actions that are being applauded and recognized the better it is for the mentee to know to continue and expand upon those actions. --ARoseWolf 17:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you @ARoseWolf and @Isaacl! I agree that feedback and recognition that is specific will certainly be more valuable. I think this is an idea we should explore further. Thank you for providing feedback! KStoller-WMF (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF:
Would this new module encourage you to send appreciation to your mentees? Not really. If I think they need appreciation then I will leave them a personalized talk message.
If you had to provide appreciation to this mentee, do you have all the information you need to decide to praise this user? No I don't. Sure I can see that they're making edits or when they created the account, or even how many of their edits have been reverted, however I don't have enough information about the users other than this info.
Do you think some Mentors will hesitate to “Send appreciation” because it is not clear that there is an additional step (visit the talk page and confirm message) after clicking that button? Yes. I myself would hesitate since I don't know what the message would look like or what the contents would be.
Is the edit time frame setting enough to cover your needs to find mentees to praise? No, not at all. From what I can see it seems to be based only on the number of edits they have made. This does not take into account the constructiveness of the edits and can also be seen as WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. I feel it should take into account the number of edits that have been reverted as well as what namespace they were in (for example, if a user makes X amount of edits to their userpage and their mentor has X set to the amount of edits before the user is deemed praiseworthy, the mentor could simply praise the user for editing their userpage which can lead to the editor being seen as WP:NOTHERE since they might think that editing only their userpage is a good thing).
Should we provide a pre-defined message you can edit later? Somewhat. I feel that generic pre-written messages won't be as encouraging as a personalized message since a pre-written message could be seen by the mentee as "Oh this is just something they give to everyone." rather than "Oh this user sees that I've done something good and is leaving a message to show this".
Would you use notifications to be informed of a new mentee to be praised? No. It would just spam my notifications with useless notifs as there's a good chance a mentee might reach that edit threshold, log off, and then never edit again.
Is there a setting you’d like to see in the module’s settings? I can't think of anything at the moment. I will update this message if I think of something though.
Do you have any comments or suggestions regarding this feature? Are there any statistics that show that this would be helpful and not harmful?
― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I decided to sort my mentor dashboard by oldest to newest and discovered that User:MSantos (WMF) is one of my many mentees which... is a bit odd. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:20, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Most WMF staff accounts don't receive special user rights, so it wouldn't be simple to handle them in a different way than other newcomer accounts. Does it seem odd for any WMF staff account to be mentored by non-staff, or is that specific case odd because of the age of that account? KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
I find it odd for them to be mentored by non-staff simply because they should know what they're doing on Wikipedia. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 22:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Any newcomer to an environment, no matter how much experience they may have in other settings, might have questions, and so I think it can be helpful to have a person already identified as a contact. The term "mentor" might be a bit counter to traditional expectations, where a mentor provides career guidance and inspiration. In this case, it's just someone who might be able to answer your questions. isaacl (talk) 02:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Isaacl though I understand and can appreciate Blaze Wolf's hesitation over seeing a WMF user name as a mentee. Personally, I would welcome the opportunity to mentor any editor, experienced or new, staff or not. --ARoseWolf 15:35, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I do understand what isaacl (isaacI? Curse lowercase L and capital i looking the same in this font!). It just seemed really odd to me since from what I know about mentorship, it's meant for new users, and a WMF staff member isn't really a new user. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, @Blaze Wolf for the extensive feedback. We'll discuss all of the feedback we've received and short term and long term improvements to address some of these concerns. My hope is to make this feature flexible enough so that it works for all language editions of Wikipedia and for each individual mentor. For some mentors that likely means that they won't use this feature at all, but others might find it useful.
We plan to conduct an A/B test to measure the impact of this new feature, so we'll know more about the effectiveness of this feature before we scale to English Wikipedia.
I agree with your assessment that we need to ensure we are including revert data, so we at least provide a basic indication of the constructiveness of a newcomer's edits.
You also mentioned that we should highlight which namespace a newcomer's edits are in... that's great feedback that hasn't been mentioned by others (we are also discussing on CSwiki, BNwiki, ARwiki, and ESwiki). I'm not sure exactly how to fit that into existing designs, but I can definitely see how that would be useful. I wonder if we could provide a percentage of edits that are in Mainspace (and link that to the user's Xtools statistics (which includes a Namespace Totals pie chart). Providing a mainspace edit percentage would ensure you don't need to navigate away to get more info, but Mentors would have an easy link to more data if they wanted to investigate further. Do you think that would help? KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
@KStoller-WMF: Yes definitely, However I also think just a general number could be useful as well as a %. WP:GAME is also a concern with this kind of behavior. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 23:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Short description task

I was thinking about a short description task. Some advantages and disadvantages:

Pro

  • Easy to mark articles that need short descriptions
  • Teaching a user to add short description is easier given their prevalence when using the search bar
  • Can be modeled after WP:Shortdesc helper

Con

  • Small peripheral contribution
  • Policy for short description (content & when to add) probably varies between Wikipedias

What do you guys think? Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 01:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I like that thought! I think it'd be a great, easy task for entry-level newcomers, and probably easier to build compared to some other tasks. The one con I'd add is that it's a task where it'd be a little harder for newcomers to see the impact of their work, and thus might feel a little less fulfilling. The intro to the task would have to present very clearly, "this is where short descriptions show up," so that folks know what they're doing. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
FTR, the Apps team works on this suggested task. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Courtesy pinging @JTanner (WMF) and @ARamadan-WMF in that case. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 15:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I should have add added that English Wikipedia asked to have this feature being turned off. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Oh, I took a deeper look at the page there, and it looks like there are a few different things here. Sungodtemple, as I understand it, is envisioning a tool that prompts and helps newcomers write SDs, not necessarily drawing from Wikidata. The previous feature that the community asked to turn off drew SDs automatically from Wikidata. And the apps team is currently looking at prompting users to add machine-generated SDs.
Overall, my stance is that this whole area is clouded by the original sin of forking Wikipedia SDs from Wikidata, which has created a ton of redundancy and will cause massive headaches when we eventually re-merge them. There are also complications from the fact that the community hasn't decided what exactly we want SDs to be. There are ongoing discussions about questions like how strict we should be about the 40-character limit, which biographies should have birth/death dates, etc. That lack of consensus means that, even if we could magically teach new editors anything, we haven't yet decided exactly what best practices we'd want to teach them.
It also makes machine-generated SD suggestions a particularly risky proposition at this point. For example, I'm curious, Amal, do the suggestions for biography pages currently include birth/death dates or not? That'll indicate perhaps which way the consensus is tipping, but we don't want to have newcomers adding these dates at mass scale until the best practices are firmed up. Also, if the guidance includes nuances/caveats, I worry that machine-generated SDs might miss them. For instance, the current guidance says that dates should be added only if the formatting criteria are met, which means we don't want them when adding them would push the SD over 40 characters. Do Descartes' suggestions reflect that consideration? If not, I think you might find it hard to get Wikipedians' consensus to use it.
Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:47, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Sdkb, deeply appreciating these reflections. @ARamadan-WMFshared our project page on the improvements we are attempting to make to the apps Article Descriptions Suggested Edits task. As it stands right now, Android app users must have 3 edits before they can complete a suggested edit. We put this gate in because we agree with the sentiment that as it stands, article descriptions would be a challenging first task/edit. Machine Assisted Article Descriptions is an experiment in every sense of the word. I invite you to read the project page for the full details on our hypothesis, but we are aiming to understand if the algorithm improves the quality of article descriptions across languages, editor activity and tenure. English Wiki is one of the very unique cases of being divorced from Wikidata, which is why seeing how this would or would not be helpful on different language wikis is important. We will have experienced editors grade what is submitted and evaluate if people are editing what is suggested by the machine or submitting it right away. Please do let us know if you'd like to serve as one of the volunteer graders so we can capture views like yours in judging if this is a step in the right direction or not and what next steps should look like. JTanner (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Sure, I'll be happy to help out as one of the graders. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:03, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello,
My reply here will be only about apps, not Growth.
So, yes, the Android app team is working on improving the article descriptions suggested edits quality now.
You can check the mentioned above link "Machine Assisted Article Descriptions" for the whole clear information about the experiment background, objectives, and updates as well.
And for the workflow, here is the main Phabricator ticket, and from here, you can have a vision of how this will be presented to onboard the users on the feature usage.
Referring to the listed worries, I will make sure to get back to you with a reply after showing them all to my team.
With appreciation. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #25

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

Celebrations

Leveling up release

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

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

Recent changes

  • Add a link
    • Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [1][2]
    • We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
  • The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [3]
  • Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
  • Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.

Upcoming work

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

13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Reminder about upcoming Growth team meeting

Hi all, the details of the upcoming Growth team meeting got a little buried, so I wanted to remind you all that it's happening tomorrow (Thursday, March 9th). Anyone interested in newcomers, Growth features, or the Editing team's Edit check project is welcome to come! I hope to see some new faces, along with others who have attended previous meetings! @Sage (Wiki Ed), @TheDJ, @Nick Moyes, @MB, @Clovermoss, @Sdkb, @SmokeyJoe, @Atsme, @theleekycauldron @Enterprisey @BusterD

Agenda:
  • Introductions (~5 mins)
  • Kirsten: Quick Product & Technology annual planning intro + potential future Growth projects + Q&A (~10 minutes)
  • Peter & Nicolas: Edit check demo + Q&A + feedback (~35 minutes)
Meeting Goals:
  • Share an overview of where we are at in Product & Technology annual planning along with a quick overview some of the projects and priorities the Growth team is considering in the coming year.
  • Equip volunteers with the context they need about Edit check to:
    • Identify things that could go wrong/might not work
    • Learn what questions and ideas this project brings up
    • Name implicit assumptions we need to hold ourselves accountable for validating
  • Prepare this group to have future discussions about how Edit check might complement (or be extended) to address some of the Article creation for newcomer ideas this group is brainstorming.

KStoller-WMF (talk) 01:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Meeting feedback

  • Fun meeting! Very exciting to see tidbits and concepts which seem obvious but I hadn't considered. Edit check looks very powerful. BusterD (talk) 18:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
    Thanks, @BusterD, for the meeting feedback! I agree that these conversations have been enjoyable, and I know that Peter and I truly valued the feedback we received in this last meeting! Hopefully I'll have more details to share soon on how Growth team plans will be shaped by annual planning priorities, but no matter which project gets prioritized I definitely value continuing to have meetings (as long as it works for you all). I'll reach out to you and other previous attendees in a few weeks to suggest a new meeting date and time. I'm thinking a reoccurring meeting every other month might be a good cadence? KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
In Starship Troopers (film), there's a buzz line used over and over: "Do You Want to Know More?" (always accompanied by an onscreen "yes" button); I was proposing we start asking the question: "How Do You Know?" (accompanied by a positive response button). I've been thinking about younger subscribers for a while. (I'm trained as an elementary school teacher so guess why I jump to that.) "How do you know?" almost sounds like the fourth-grade version of the "why?" question a three-year-old will repeat over and over. This is a good thing. How do you know is a very healthy question to ask. At any age, on any subject. BusterD (talk) 18:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I like this. Certainly inquisitive "How Do You Know?" language is far more positive and proactive than the current revert / reactive approach that is more common now. I'm not sure what copy Edit check will settle on, but I know that Peter is hoping to make the feature community configurable in the future, and perhaps that might even apply to the language used in the notice. KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Meeting Summary

Thank you, Everyone, for joining our call on March 9th, 2023. Here is the link to the recording, and below is a brief summary:

  • During the first half of the call, Kirsten Stoller, Senior Product Manager for the Growth team, presented a high-level overview of the Product & Technology annual planning process and potential projects for 2023/2024.
    • We discussed the possible risks of a large number of extensions not having active maintainers and how some of the proposed new features might not actually lead to newcomers being ready to create new articles.
    • For follow-up questions, you can:
  • For the second half of the call, Peter Pelberg, Senior Product Manager, and Nicolas Ayoub, Senior UX Designer for the Editing Team demoed the latest progress for the Edit Check project
    • In general, there were positive reactions and excitement about the project.
    • We discussed some of the potential challenges for mobile editors and use cases with bad actors.
    • Next steps: Peter and Nico will revisit the comments and respond to everything that hasn’t been addressed during the call.
  • In the future, we are planning to start hosting monthly Growth office hours to have similar discussions with the wider group.

--MShilova (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

When we last met we discussed several of the possible projects that the Growth team might work on next fiscal year, but we also mentioned that the Annual Plan wasn't finalized and that it would guide Growth team work. So I wanted to let you all know that the Product and Technology department's Annual Plan Objectives and Key Results is available for review and discussion.
From the Growth team perspective, an important detail to note is there isn't a key result specifically about new editors or new editor retention. So the Growth team may work on project related to the "Contributor experience" objective or a "Reading and media experience" objective. It's also possible that some of our team capacity will be devoted to the "Future Audiences" focus.
Throughout April and May, you are invited to leave comments or questions on the talk page, next to the subheading associated to each draft Key Result. Some of the individual draft Key Results will also have associated "focus group" meetings, where the relevant Wikimedia Foundation staff team would like to talk with a small group of people who care about that topic in particular, to discuss the topic in detail. I'll start a new discussion and ping previous Growth team meeting attendees once I know more details about focus groups that relate to the Growth team!
Also, the draft annual plan for the whole Wikimedia Foundation is available here. There will be several synchronous and asynchronous ways to provide feedback to that plan.
Thanks! -- KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Meeting with the Growth team and Moderator Tools team: May 4th

@Sage (Wiki Ed), @TheDJ, @Nick Moyes, @MB, @Clovermoss, @Sdkb, @SmokeyJoe, @Atsme, @theleekycauldron @Enterprisey @BusterD @Novem Linguae

Since our last meeting, the Wikimedia Foundation's draft Annual Plan has been published and the Product and Technology's draft OKRs have been published. Both are still subject to change, as they are drafts and will be shaped further by the community discussions happening on those talk pages.

The Growth team and the Moderator Tools team hope to meet with community members to talk through some ideas related to Contributor experience and improving moderation workflows. To achieve this, we would like to gather insights and opinions from moderators regarding the challenges they face. We're particularly interested in understanding more about how you determine where your attention is needed, and how you prioritize different tasks. When we say 'moderators' we're referring to editors with advanced rights, such as patrollers, administrators, and functionaries.

If you are interested, you can see meeting details and sign up here.

I hope to see some of you there! Thanks, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:07, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Will Star Wars be involved?[Joke] ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 20:14, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Ha! Extra credit to anyone who shows up in a Star Wars costume?  ;)
Oh, I should have also mentioned there are several other calls and places to leave feedback, including on the talkpage of the OKR draft itself. - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:29, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #26

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

One million Suggested Edits

We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!

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

Positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.

  • The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [8]
  • The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
  • The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.

Add an image

Other updates

What's next for Growth?

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

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

15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Remove User:Pahunkat from mentor list

Hasn't edited since Nov 2022. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 21:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Any admin can do it at special:ManageMentors. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:49, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Done. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 17:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Skip buttons covered

Hello. Is there any option to make the big white button with a question mark of the Help Panel movable or at least move it higher? It partly overlaps with other features of the site, such as {{Skip to top and bottom}}. This may be annoying for new editors. TadejM my talk 09:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Which features do you have in mind? We can help with default features available at all wikis, but less with local templates and gadgets. In the case of {{Skip to top and bottom}}, this template is specific to a few wikis, and not activated by default. Maybe the template should be fixed first? I'm not saying that nothing should be done, as I truly believe that this space should be better defined to avoid competing buttons, just that the fastest way to fix things is by editing these templates' CSS. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I'll concur with Trizek there. {{Skip to top and bottom}} is a very non-standard interface element, so it should have to accommodate the Growth Team features, not the other way around. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Trizek. Thank you for the reply. I have added an image to this section to make the issue clear. I have also posted the same issue on the template talk page[12] but have got no reply thus far. I don't mind who fixes the issue but in my opinion, it is pertinent (the template has 1364 transclusions) and should be fixed. The layout should be clean on as many pages as possible. The issue certainly hinders usability for new users and those experienced users that have the button turned on. I'm afraid that by pointing out who has to do what we won't solve anything. There may be other such templates in this or other projects, so the best way in my opinion to go about would be to make the Help Edit button movable or to enable it to "sense" the overlap and correct its position (if this is possible at all). --TadejM my talk 21:50, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@TadejM, I don't know CSS well enough to get the {{Skip to top and bottom}} buttons to move myself, but the course of action I'd suggest would be to ask at WP:VPT; someone there should be able to help. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:18, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I suppose it would be better to resolve the issue at the root cause, which is the placement and functionality of this button, rather than sporadically fix templates. The options would be to move the button a bit higher, make it floatable, make it adjust its position automatically, or add the option to temporarily close the button. --TadejM my talk 23:29, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Why is the skip button considered more root than the help button? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:27, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

It is actually just the opposite: the help button is considered more root than the skip button as it influences the majority of pages here and in other projects.

If you can solve the issue with {{Skip to top and bottom}}, there are other such templates in other projects (and possibly also overlapping templates that have not even been reported) that would not get improved. By solving the issue at the level of the template, only the pages transcluding that template get improved, whereas by solving the issue at the level of the button, all pages including the button and having an overlap get immediately improved.

In addition, the template {{Skip to top and bottom}} has existed in such a form since 2016 and has been overlapped only recently. --TadejM my talk 00:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I documented the need of refining what goes where in this area. Please add other cases of floating elements at phab:T337473. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

This is much appreciated. Thank you a lot. It's a good step to define the usage of individual areas to prevent clashes. I will report these issues if I encounter more of them. --TadejM my talk 11:56, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

@TadejM, Trizek, and Sdkb: I found those buttons from {{skip to top and bottom}} very annoying, and solved the issue (just for me) using the CSS recommended on the template Talk page, which is completely effective, but leaves you without the skip nav. Otoh, you can solve it for everybody by using {{skip to bottom}} and {{skip to top}}—the latter designed just to avoid the problems talked about here. Mathglot (talk) 18:14, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

It's great that you've found a workable solution. I'm looking to get this resolved at the root level for all users and all projects. -TadejM my talk 20:58, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Article creation hypothesis

Hello

Following the previous topic, just above, the Growth team is exploring a project idea that aims to improve the experience of new editors by providing them with better guidance and structure in the article creation process. The hope being that by providing new editors with more structure around article creation, it will lead to newcomers creating fewer low-quality articles that create work for patrollers who check recent edits and mentors who review newcomers’ drafts.

In 2022, about 28% of newly registered users who completed the Welcome Survey indicated that they opened an account specifically to create a new article (all stats). These newcomers don't yet understand core Wikipedia principles and guidelines around notability, verifiability, conflict of interest, neutral point of view, etc. These newcomers need additional guidance or they end up frustrated and disappointed when their articles get deleted. Because they aren't receiving the proactive guidance they need, they end up creating additional work for content moderators (patrollers, admins, watchlisters…) who need to provide reactive guidance which is rarely well-received or well-understood.

While the specifics of the project, and the Growth team’s annual planning priorities, are still under consideration, we anticipate exploring ideas related to  Article creation improvements for new editors.  One possibility is a community configurable "Article wizard" or helper, which could also fulfill the 2023 Community Wishlist survey Reference requirement for new article creation proposal (ranked #26 out of 182 proposals).

We're committed to shaping the overall plan based on community feedback and needs, while adhering to the following requirements:

  • The feature will be Community configurable, enabling each community to customize it to meet their unique needs.
  • The feature will provide guidance and guardrails to help newcomers create higher-quality articles and improve their overall experience.
  • The feature will be designed to reduce the downstream workload for content moderators.

So, we would love to hear from you:

  1. Do you think this project will help new page patrollers on English Wikipedia?  
  2. Do you have any suggestions for improving this idea?
  3. Is there anything about this idea that you find concerning, or you want to ensure we avoid?

Or do you want the Growth team to consider a totally different idea?  Keep in mind that the Moderator Tools team and two other teams are also working the shared  “improve the experience of editors with extended rights” key result, so there will be other teams approaching this from a less new-editor centric perspective.

Thoughts? :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) ultimately I would say this comes down to two questions:
  1. Will the "harm reduction" of improving those editors who are going to make an article first thing regardless outweigh the risk of the tool nudging editors who wouldn't make an article (or could be persuaded to delay) into trying article creation out early on?
  2. What is the opportunity cost of creating something like this?
In en-wiki (and likely other large wiki) terms, I couldn't begin to make a guess as to how the trade-off will play out, but I could well see something like this really helping out on wikis that are still in a prioritise new article stage, likely with lower thresholds to be met by new articles. Something that ran new editors through the basic questions (including catching unintentional paid-editor violations) and guidance could well be worthwhile. I actually suspect it would probably help AfC more than NPP.
In terms of suggestions, things like getting them to go find sources first, and efforts to try to trim out as many unsuitable sources as possible (whether through guidance, or machine-based through reference to WP:RSP and the blacklists, or a mix) would say a lot of aggro.
In regards to the opportunity cost - if Growth didn't do something like this, would would make it in that otherwise might not? Nosebagbear (talk) 14:32, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
+1 on all this. To expand on the risk of the tool nudging editors who wouldn't make an article (or could be persuaded to delay) into trying article creation out early on, creating a new article is inherently an advanced task, since it requires mastering all the different elements that go into an article, whereas other tasks often require only mastering one. That'll stay the case even if the Article Wizard is optimized to perfection.
So if our goal is to ultimately recruit more editors who go on to become senior contributors, there's a risk associated with nudging them to create an article too early, leading them to get overwhelmed and quit. Among the 28% who join Wikipedia intent on creating an article, I'm not sure how much potential there is for recruitment anyways — many of these are SPAs who care only about promoting the entity they're trying to create an article about, not Wikipedia's broader mission of documenting knowledge. Even if we're not recruiting future admins, there's still some potential value: content created by such editors can be decent if they're sufficiently corralled into abiding by neutrality rules, and if the project makes it easier for patrollers to deal with these editors then it could reduce our workload. But as you're weighing whether to pursue this or not and looking at that 28% number, I'd just urge you to keep in mind that not all newcomers have equal potential to develop into experienced editors. The group intent on article creation may be a large pool, but the quality candidates in it are probably a lot more spaced out than in some other smaller pools.
Best, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:34, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
If someone's single purpose is to create an article about a notable topic and a wizard lets them do that better than they could on their own, I think ultimately Wikipedia is a little better off than they were before even if they disappear afterwards. If someone's single purpose is to create an article about a non-notable topic and this lets them do that better than they could on their own, that becomes a problem because it will mean more volunteer time is having to be spent reaching the conclusion "this is not an appropriate topic to cover on enwiki". So how much of that 28% fall in the "notable topic, lack skills" category and how much falls in the "non-notable topic, lacks skills" category really matters in figuring out the net positive/net negative impact of this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:35, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear and @Sdkb, Thank you for providing your insight! I believe it's important to clarify that this project does not aim to funnel more newcomers into article creation (at least not on larger wikis). Growth tools encourage new editors to start with smaller edits, and we do not intend to change that. We are simply thinking about ways to provide better guidance for newcomers who progress to article creation early on and really need more help, especially around providing reliable references.
Regarding the opportunity cost of undertaking this project, we are currently evaluating the impact, effort, and risks associated with various project ideas. Another project idea in discussion is to make the newcomer homepage more modular and "grow" with editors as they become more involved and experienced. In fact, @Johannnes89 recently suggested a similar concept to the Growth team. If communities express interest, we can certainly consider this project instead.
There is also the possibility that the Growth team will work on a project related to a different annual plan key result: potentially a project more centered around readers.
In light of this information, do you have concerns with the Growth team focusing on providing more structure for editors creating their first article or article draft? Or do you have thoughts on other priorities the Growth team should focus on that is still in alignment with the Contributor experience, key result 1.2? KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
I really like the idea of adding more reader-focused features to the homepage. Wikipedia's massive readership is such a huge asset, and if we can convince even a tiny fraction of it to create an account, that'll be a huge number of users at the (very) start of the path from reader to editor. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:34, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
I know NPP have had some discussions with the moderator tools team about this and think it can be useful no matter which team does it. One important note from a Growth Team perspective: newly registered editors cannot create mainspace articles, they have to do so in draftspace. So there is going to be some level of barrier/impediment for the 28% of new editors even if this project is successful. This is copied from WT:NPR where I originally saw this announcement to here so that any discussion here among non-WMF people can consider it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:45, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your replies.
@Nosebagbear, the idea behind this project is indeed to help wikis getting more quality contents. Biggest wikis have more rules and expectations, that could be conveyed in the article creation process, while smaller wikis would be happy to get more articles being written with an increased quality. I'll post the same message to AfC, good idea.
Regarding the cost opportunity, well, at the moment, everything is possible. The goal of this discussion, which happens as well at ar, bn, cs, es and fr, is to get more people feeding our discussions.
@Barkeep49, NPP discussions are one of the reasons why we consider this project for the upcoming fiscal year. Regarding the article creation process, going through draft submission can be a step in article creation. Consider this project as a way to reduce the drafts backlog, as the quality of submitted articles would improve.
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
I'd also support the measure for new editors to only create articles in draft-space for a while. The AfC bar is pretty difficult for a new editor, but the AfC team would likely support new editors with a good idea to clear the bar.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:57, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
That is already the case. Editors have to use draftspace and AfC until they are autoconfirmed. -- asilvering (talk) 05:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I still see many articles created by editors with a few edits. How about new editors are extended confirmed and/or brought 10 articles through AfC? Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF): despite being the editor who consolidated the three parallel copies of this discussion, I'm not actually sure where to reply, and am low-key hoping someone with like a keyboard will refactor the combined conversation to make it easier to follow.
This isn't exactly an answer to your questions, but I believe the most important thing to hammer home in newcomer education regarding new article creation is the priority of sourcing, and here I'm using priority not in the sense of importance, but in its chronological meaning of firstness. In my opinion probably the best essay for newcomers to read before they try to create an article is WP:BACKWARD.
If I were working on improving / recreating the article creation wizard, the first interface screen would ask for the editor's best source, with a second field for them to estimate length of topic coverage in units of paragraphs or pages, nothing more granular. Then I'd have two sidey-side columns of tickboxes related to reliability and independence (not a forum post, not an interview, not a press release, not user-generated content, or whatever people think best encapsulates the most common stumbling blocks in these two categories). The editor would have to tick all the boxes to proceed. While this could possibly then produce a formatted citation with important fields like title, author, and date left invitingly empty, nothing would have to record or attempt to verify the input: the important bit is having the newcomer think through why their source is good enough, not to restrict their contributions.
After two of these "best source" interface screens, then I'd display an input field for what the editor wants to name their new article. If we can convey the idea that editors shouldn't even consider what their article is going to be titled without first finding sources for it, I think it would teach a lot without requiring much reading. And while we don't want to increase the barrier of entry, embracing this sort of "fail faster" approach should allow newcomers to work on crucial skills before spending time and effort writing a bunch of prose that gets frustratingly deleted due to unsuitability.
Having said all that, I don't work NPP or AFC, so my opinion should be understood as that of a partially informed outsider. Folly Mox (talk) 18:22, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
A newcomer recently asked me if it was hard to create a new article. My response was as follows:
"Creating a Wikipedia article is very difficult because it requires experience in lots of different skills. The most important stage is the research stage, where you need to find sources and identify whether they are reliable; when you have reliable sources, you need to assess whether they amount to notability. If you decide your topic is definitely notable then you need to summarise the sources in your own words, making sure the reader can check which fact comes from which source. Then, you need good writing skills and the ability to format using wikitext so the article is readable. Newcomers should start with tasks that help them develop these skills one at a time, some of which are recommended on your homepage. The ideal is to start by adding reliable sources to existing articles that are in poor shape."
Our main aim should be to discourage newcomers from creating a new article, and we should not be ashamed of this. It is like a driving teacher preventing a student from going on the motorway (high-speed roads). These 28% of new users who come to create an article should be told: great, let's build your skills up with these simpler tasks so we can reach that goal. — Bilorv (talk) 20:53, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed on all that. But it could very well be that three quarters of that 28% are "my buddy has a really cool garage band that should have a page." They're not going to be interested in anything else, let alone sustained practice. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:15, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
And paid editors, too, could be a bulk of that 28%. Nonetheless, the sooner we can scare all such people away, the better. Directing newcomers to article wizards without fair warning wastes the time of everybody involved. If you don't want to start with the simpler tasks then you're going to have to be an exceptional case for your contributions to add value to Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 20:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
I really wonder about this question of value. My default hypothesis is that the people who end up sticking around long-term, ie, the people who become "Wikipedians", are people who signed up to edit Wikipedia, not to create an article. I don't expect there are many of this kind of people in that 28%, and I don't know if you can convert people into this sort of person if what they're motivated by is "I realized x didn't have an article so I decided to make one." However, I think there probably are quite a lot of actually valuable articles on Wikipedia that are written by that 28% nonetheless. Would there be any way to find out? I'm not sure what metrics would even work to test this hypothetically. Number of users who have created only one mainspace article and are not extended confirmed, maybe? -- asilvering (talk) 21:13, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
@Asilvering, I've been wondering the exact same thing. I don't think there is an easy way to answer this with the data I can access, but I think the data is available. I'll discuss with the Growth team further to see if we can start answering some of these questions, as I think we need to have answers to questions like this before moving forward. Thanks for your insight and questions! Please let me know if there are any other key data questions like this around article creation you want answered.
I've added some initial data and open questions here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Article_creation_for_new_editors#Research KStoller-WMF (talk) 16:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
I think guardrails are good, but nothing will discourage new editors, constructive or nonconstructive, to write the article they want. To be honest, I created my account mostly to expand Zopherus jourdani out from a redirect. I had done a bit of IP editing before then, but nothing major. This redirect-expansion project- which I found very difficult- went fine in the end. However, I believe that creating an account and writing a new article- with the processes involved- helped me get more interested in the project as a whole. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 14:47, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

This discussion is currently taking place in three places simultaneously, with mostly non-overlapping participants. Since the present instance of the discussion is the one linked from the mediawiki page, I'm announcing my intent to copy-paste the other two instances here using the appropriate templates, to defragment the conversation. Folly Mox (talk) 15:46, 20 May 2023 (UTC)  Done 15:59, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § Article creation hypothesis
 – Defragmenting conversation.
Just noting the parallel discussion about updating the existing Article Wizard. Also, it sounds like this project will help Articles for Creation, not to get too pedantic about who you're informing of your goals ;-)
But yes, overall this sounds like it would be a boon to this project, WP:NPR, and the Encyclopedia as a whole. Primefac (talk) 16:30, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac, thank you! If you see it as a bonus, can I ask you which traps this project could fell in? Just to have a counter point of view, that will certainly feed the discussion! :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Bonadea hits on a few of them below; we want to make this easier for new users but not at the expense of making it harder for the reviewers. I honestly couldn't say what sort of pitfalls there will be, because we've been trying to improve the AFC process since before I joined and we are still coming up with ways to improve our processes (I think there are at least three discussions ongoing now about the matter). Some problems can't be solved, but as long as whatever is done can be easily undone if necessary, there is no real long-term harm. Primefac (talk) 08:24, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
It is depressing to see those stats. Not surprising, because so many drafts are created by new users who have no other edits, but profoundly discouraging.
I guess the first question is what makes this proposed article wizard better than the current one in en.wiki?
Looking at the community wishlist discussion, mention is made of a video explaining how to add references; I'm sure that is a nifty idea, but please make sure that no information is only available in video form. It has to be available as written text as well.
That any new article at en.wiki must have references is true, but this is not going to "reduce the downstream workload" (sorry, that kind of marketingspeak makes my skin crawl a little) for "content moderators" (unfortunate choice of words – we try pretty hard to make it clear to new editors that English Wikipedia has no "moderators", we are all simply editors). AfC reviewers and NPR patrollers will have to check the references in drafts / new articles just like we do now, and what takes time (and "increases the downstream workload") is not making sure there is a footnote in the text (that takes no time at all!) but explaining to the new editor why certain sources can't be used, why it's unacceptable to dump references at random points in the article or to place them all at the end of the article, why ten crappy sources are not better than no source, why ten good sources are not better than one good source in order to verify a simple statement of fact, etc, etc, etc. That's not going to change with a new article creation tool which requires one reference in order to publish an article.
The situation is going to look very different in different Wikipedia versions, but I do not have a sense that new articles without any source at all is a particularly big problem at en.wiki. Most of them do have at least one source, so I'm not sure if this would solve anything for this particular wp version. But I might be very wrong about that, of course. --bonadea contributions talk 18:55, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
@Bonadea, thank you.
We always keep thing in text format, as it is the less data consuming form to transmit information. Not everyone has fiber-optic high-speed internet connexion with a state-of-the art computer to edit the wikis.
Regarding the terms used, which one would you suggest to describe all users who loot at new changes, check submitted drafts or pending changes, etc? :) I almost went with "curators" but I've been told previously that it wasn't specific enough.
The "marketingspeak" is using vague terms for a reason: we want to hear your ideas, based on your experience, not to hear comments on ideas we have (not at this step). Let me sketch a couple of possible ideas (but keep in mind that nothing has been set so far, they are my ideas as an article reviewer at French Wikipedia): as you illustrated it well, reviewers have a lot of work to check on references. What if we help with a tool that pre-checks references when article creators add them to their draft? Or a tool that ask them if the footnote covers what they wrote in the last sentence? Providing content creation advice would reduce the number of non-compilent references. Again, I really don't like to share ideas, as they could influence the discussion, so please keep my disclaimers in mind.
Thank you for keeping other Wikipedia in mind. We started this conversation with 6 communities to have different perspectives.
Thank you again for your detailed reply. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:41, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF) AfC and NPP editors are referred to as "reviewers" in the documentation for each project. -- asilvering (talk) 00:22, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you @Asilvering! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
One step I think we could take to help the workload is make it much clearer to new editors what things are completely inappropriate for Wikipedia (junk like Draft:Thomas Mills for instance). New editors trying to make BLPs is one of the biggest potential areas we can have serious problems as far as article creations. I think what you are proposing is fundamentally a good idea that could help out both NPP and AfC. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
@Trainsandotherthings, thank you! How can we make clear which topics are appropriate (or accepted)? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
We should be clear that certain things aren't appropriate at all (opinion pieces, autobiographies, etc) and in my opinion caution against BLPs for brand new editors in general. If we could get every new editor to read WP:NOT, we would save a lot of time. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:15, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Notified WT:NPP/R. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 04:09, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
They already know, for what it's worth. Primefac (talk) 06:21, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
I didn't know that page existed, honestly. Not sure if I just missed it or if it's somewhat hidden, but I would've checked it if I knew it existed. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 10:20, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Oh, not surprising, NPR has more pages than we used to! I just wanted to make sure everyone knows where all of the discussions are. Primefac (talk) 10:26, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination § Article creation hypothesis
 – Defragmenting conversation

IMO the fix needs to come from En Wikipedia. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:32, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I know NPP have had some discussions with the moderator tools team about this and think it can be useful no matter which team does it. One important note from a Growth Team perspective: newly registered editors cannot create mainspace articles, they have to do so in draftspace. So there is going to be some level of barrier/impediement for the 28% of new editors even if this project is successful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
@North8000, how can en.wp fix it, and how can the Growth team help there?
@Barkeep49, as dais elsewhere, submitting a draft can be a step in the process. Even if it is mandatory at en.wp, it also exists at other wikis, under a "strongly encouraged" advice.
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Much can be accomplished by mere education about wikipeda and guidance. The underlying structural problem preventing moving forward on this is that functionally we only have two kinds of pages:

  • "Rule" pages (policies and guidelines)
  • Thousands of random essays and essay-like pages

We need two new vetted categories:

  1. Vetted information and teaching pages Should be a short highly vetted list. Maybe 20 within a year and eventually never over 100
  2. Definitive statements about Wikipedia. Ultra-consensused. "Constitution" pages; too vague to be invoked directly but they guide policies and guidelines. To start wp:5P would be the one and only of these. Eventual max of only 5 or 10

The foundation needed here is #1. We really don't give newbies guidance because the only guidance that we give is "Here's thousands of good and bad, useful and non-useful essays.....go randomly wander amongst those and try to learn". So one document under #1 would be the highly vetted official landing and navigation page for newbies which would only navigate to a short list of other #1, #2 documents and policies and guidelines. For "making a new article" it would route to another official #1 page which starts with the "should an article exist?" question and points them to read WP:Not & WP:Notability. It instructs them that step 1 of building (or deciding not to build) a new article is to find 1 or 2 GNG references and start the article with those. If it has those, chances are that the article should exist, regardless of how badly done it is. Voila, we have solved a whole bunch of new article, NPP, AFD problems and eliminate tons of drama and wasted work.

The other easy big fix is to convert AFC into just handling "should this article exist?" questions instead of the very tough article perfection gauntlet that it currently is. Then (and not until then) we need to nudge all newer editors to go through AFC. North8000 (talk) 16:16, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed reply, @North8000.
I went through the AFC, and it seems to me that the most important elements to have in an article are detailed there. It is quite short. When you mention the numerous pages users are encouraged to read, I guess it is though the multiple links provided?
How to you imagine the "should an article exist?" process?
How a user would know if a reference proves notability?
Thank you again, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:59, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
  • I assume you're aware that we already have an article wizard? Though it could certainly be improved. – Joe (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
    We are @Joe Roe. :) Plus, this discussion is not only happening at English Wikipedia, but at 5 other wikis that have different AFC processes. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:17, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
    So would this replace the existing wizard, enhance it, supplement it...? It's hard to answer your questions without knowing how your idea will fit into existing processes here on enwiki. – Joe (talk) 14:58, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
    @Joe Roe, I know it is difficult, but we want to hear you regarding article creation in general. We don't want to say "we will improve this" or "we will built something different", as it would left aside some ideas that would not be considered if we narrow down the context or the possibilities. What would help new pages patrolled at your wiki? What is overall missing in new pages? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:01, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Here's the AFC problem and I'll use and extreme case for clarity. Let's say that an AFC article has 1-2 references that look like GNG references and complies with wp:not, but needs a lot of work which means it has a lot of big problems. IMO that article should be passed out of AFC into article space for further development but in reality it won't because a typical reviewer will not want to put their stamp of approval on such an article. So it's overly difficult to get an article through AFC. The solution is to make it clear that the only thing AFC reviewers are responsible for is "should this article exist" type questions. And I was arguing for a new pattern and new guidance saying in essence "Step one of creating a new article is to find 1-2 GNG type references". North8000 (talk) 17:02, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Regarding "How a user would know if a reference proves notability?" My answer would be to just see if it has 1-2 GNG type sources that look likely for wp:notability. Say "it's OK to pass the edge cases". Edge cases can get handled later.North8000 (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

My sense is that AI is still a far way off from being able to automatically assess the "GNG-contribution" of a given source, let alone a set of sources collectively. The only idea that comes to mind tools to assist new editors in this process would be to implement a checklist that asks new editors to go through their cited sources and identify whether each one, individually, 1) contains significant coverage of the topic 2) is independent of the subject 3) is a secondary source, before letting them submit the page for review. If the editor's responses can be transcribed to the talk page or as an AFC comment, it could further aid reviewers in assessing articles that contain mountains of sources. signed, Rosguill talk 17:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
@North8000, "should this article exist" will be a qualified yes for someone who wants to create it. What is the best way to explain that Wikipedia is not accepting all topics?
The following question is also for you, and @Rosguill (and everyone else, of course): do you think users who just create an account understand what it "a good source"? I have the feeling that the 3 conditions Rosguill lists are concepts that aren't familiar with most people.
Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:09, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
A cause of that issue is lack of focus and a big part of the fix would be focus. Newcomers get bombarded with a zillion pieces of advice and rules, and an AFC reviewer is going to make sure that most of them are learned and followed before they risk putting their stamp of approval on the article. The answer is that in areas of new article creation the advice and criteria should be focused on the areas in my post. Another fix would be to recommended to newbies to learn the lay of the land here and work in other areas before creating an article. I wish someone would have given me that advice when I was a newbie. North8000 (talk) 14:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
I think that for the checklist to be effective it needs to have definitions of each of those things, but I think that probably 3/4 new editors could get it right if presented with a short definition of each term. Significant coverage: multiple sentences or paragraphs analyzing or describing the subject in detail; independent: neither the author nor publisher of the source has any connection to the subject, and the source is not a user-generated website; secondary (probably the hardest one): the source is reporting on and analyzing information from other sources, and is not a database entry. signed, Rosguill talk 17:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
I suspect that even if we asked new users those 3 questions that Rosguill suggests, that many would still not assess the source notability accurately. GNG simply has too many nuances. However, perhaps it would help a little bit, and begin training these folks in GNG. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

1) I went ahead and informed Wikipedia talk:Article wizard.

2) May I also suggest in the future that the discussion be held on one page, and then additional pages be notified with the {{subst:Please see}} template? It seems the discussion is being scattered across a couple different pages.

3) The current article wizard ends with the new article being placed into draftspace, with a "submit" template included at the top of the draft, which I think is good. That part of the workflow should be kept.

4) The top 2 things about writing an article that give a new editor a bad experience, in my opinion, are A) writing an article on a non-notable topic that then gets declined or deleted since it is non-notable, and B) writing an article that is of borderline notability that then sits in the draftspace queue for 3 months because it is not an easy accept and not an easy decline (easy accepts and easy declines are processed quickly). This is often combined with WP:REFBOMBing. The delay in accepting/declining comes from the fact that the reviewer needs to click open all these 10, 20, 30 sources and evaluate each for GNG, which is a bit laborious and requires skill.

Both of these problems would be solved by getting newer editors to include multiple top quality, WP:GNG passing sources in their submissions, preferably at the top of the list of citations, and not drowned out by excessive other citations. But GNG is hard to teach to new editors. In my opinion, GNG is written quite vaguely, and attempts to add more detail to the guideline are declined. In my opinion, simply reading notability guideline pages will not teach a newer editor enough about notability for them to be able to determine if a topic or their article is notable.

I think there may be opportunities to insert a step into the article wizard that explains enough of WP:GNG to help out draft writers. Something like "Not all topics qualify for a Wikipedia article. The articles most likely to qualify will have citations to multiple high quality sources such as newspapers and books going into multiple paragraphs of detail about the topic. Before you spend a lot of time writing an article, do you have at least X such sources? Yes/No"

In fact I may propose this be added to the current article wizard.

5) Changing gears, I am not sure what a major overhaul of the article wizard would look like. Do we have a list of things we don't like about the current article wizard? Things that need fixing? Things we'd do differently? I think drilling down into these kinds of details, and then using them to create a detailed proposal, will be important for moving forward with any kind of article wizard overhaul. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:08, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Novem Linguae, it elps.
A quick note regarding using {{subst:Please see}}: we observe that users are less likely to participate of we ask them to go to a different page than the one they read. :)
I took good note of your suggestion of an initial warning. Allow me to challenge it: all users who really want to create an article will say yes even if their article topic is not notable, and less confident users will click no even if their article topic is notable. How can we avoid this effect?
We can consider this discussion as a way to re-thing the Article wizard, even if we have no plans regarding improving or replacing it right now. If a list of WP:WIZARD improvements exist, I'm curious to read it as well. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF) it's worth noting that it's not just a case that we are advising users not to create articles first-thing just because their notability checking might be off (though it is a big thing, and yes, stressing sources first in the process would be really good) - biographical articles in particular are so tricky to do well that it's bloody tough as a new editor to do. So less confident users being put off even if their article is notable can be a positive as well as a negative.
Of course, if we view your question as "less confident users will click no even if they shouldn't", then I guess trying to put the guidance in a form that it's easy for them to see if they do meet those standards (whatever they are - sourcing, etc). So if they do know a source and put it in, it should encourage them to continue, where appropriate. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae, my suggestions for what I'd like to see in the article wizard are at User:Sdkb/Vision for a better Article Wizard. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 15:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the link @Sdkb. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I'd advise against using wording like "high-quality sources" and stick to clear, definitive terms wherever possible ("newspapers", "books published by academic presses", etc). I see a lot of confusion over this, and often outrage, in response to AfC declines. -- asilvering (talk) 00:41, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree with these posts. I think that even just giving some guidance that finding GNG sources is step 1 of making an article / deciding whether or not to make it and explaining / checklist regarding what a GNG source is. We don't need perfection here or to be overly stringent to worry about edge cases. BTW my comments were focused on making AFC more focused on notability and to ease up in the other areas. The it becomes more viable to nudge newbies to go through AFC. North8000 (talk) 11:54, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Can we merge this discussion to WT:AFC#Article creation hypothesis to centralize it to one place? Having separate discussions on separate pages about the same thing seems like a bad idea. (I say to take it over there because that talk page is more active, but I don't really mind which one it ends up on; we could merge the discussion from there over here as well, I don't care.) Skarmory (talk • contribs) 12:26, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Up to Trizek (WMF). I'd be fine with a merge. Maybe use the templates {{Moved from}} and {{Moved to}}, then cut and paste the relevant text. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:28, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Truthfully I think the one page it should be on is the Growth team's project page on enwiki because that's where updates will presumably happen. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
I left a note on centralizing discussions here on Trizek's user talk page. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 15:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm more than fine with a merge, as it follow communities' guidelines, and makes things easier for everyone to watch. Would one of you be so kind as to do this? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Already done by a bold editor a day or two ago. Should be all set with the merge. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:38, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. I noticed one merged conversation, and while I posted three times, I thought one was missing.
We are pleasantly surprised to read so many feedback on our project, and the same is true for other wikis where we started this conversation. It was a little bit unexpected, and I admit being a bit overflowed at the moment. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I applaud everything about Trizek's efforts and handling. I also advocate centralizing discussion in one place and here is fine even if I think that the fix needs to come more from en wikipedia than WMF. Thank you Trizek and I invite you to also jump deeper in on en Wikipedia. :-) North8000 (talk) 23:42, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @North8000, and many thanks to everyone involved in this discussion! Your feedback is of great value.
@North8000, my missions aren't not often leading me to collaborate with English Wikipedia. Maybe in the future? :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
First thank you opening this discussion. Then also for centralizing it, but the signposts are not so good in my opinion as I wondered where someone is commenting for quite some time. Then I do not really see any firm points that were to address, so I just start.
If new editors want to create a new article they should be helped, of course, but if the article creation process is planned to get reformed, I'd suggest a length requirement. I know it's difficult to pass, (I have tried that several times in the past, and failed) but one, two-line stubs are just not adding to an encyclopedia, and leaves the eventual reader (like me) unsatisfied or disappointed. Such info is in my opinion much better placed at the Wiktionary. I suggest a bar of at least 100 words in prose? In many sources for short articles is more information to be found, so they just need to make a little greater effort, a mentor could also help them to achieve it. And the 100 words bar should not only count for new editors but also experienced editors. Also experienced editors can choose a mentor to help them create an article of over 100 words.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 08:33, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
Articles like this should not be able to be published anymore in my opinion. Write a bit on education and experience which is both also to be found in the source used in the article. 100 words bar and at least some of it, will appear.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:16, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle, I noted your preference for a minimum length at article creation. I understand that the minimum length is more about sources, as it would force new users to read sources and exploit them a bit more? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF), there is no basis in English Wikipedia guidance for a minimum article prose length requirement, and many editors would oppose such a requirement per the rationale at WP:MAKESTUBS. Growth team features such apply existing guidance, not make new rules. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
@Trizek (WMF) You are correct, With such a bar, editors become more careful and unpleasant discussions with an unfavorable ending for all involved (I don't see a desysopping of the first editor and and an indef. block as good reference for editing Wikipedia) which we had around the articles of Carlossuarez46 and Lugnuts, could be prevented. After all, we are happy that editors invest their time in adding content, and in my opinion, we could prepare them in a way so they will not get in such a situation where their article creation lead to negative discussions at the ANI but guide them kindly to more qualitative contributions. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:40, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
@Sdkb, don't shoot the guy who asks silly questions here. I play naive to further thoughts and ideas, but the goal is not to impose new rules; it's your role, not ours. :)
@Paradise Chronicle, thank you for these further details. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:28, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle, there are a handful of experienced editors that mass-produce low-quality stubs, but within the bigger picture, they're an extreme edge case. Furthermore, the community has been able to deal with the issue (per the ANI links), and even if it hadn't, it's not something that tools targeted toward helping newcomers would be well-suited to address. Fundamentally, Wikipedia is a work in progress, and if the only thing a newcomer is willing to do is create a (notable) short stub, we shouldn't stop them, as that's an incremental improvement over nothing. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:06, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, the extreme edge case is responsible for a good part of the rising number of articles which Wikipedia regularly celebrates after reaching some "milestone". Maybe an example about the different assessments of articles could be displayed. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I came here from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation; I also have experience in AfD. My view is that the thing that newbie editors trip over most frequently is understand sources. Without understanding sources you can't understand notability, because notability depends on sources + consensus and the consensus here is built on sources. A sources-first article wizard could ask things like (a) what is the URL / ISBN of this source (b) by what name does this source refer to this topic (c) what is the connection between this source and this topic (d) what is the connection between this source and myself (e) in your own words, what does this source say about this topic .... With this info, building an article becomes much more straightforward. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
    Thank you @Stuartyeates. Would you use experienced users as curators or checkers somewhere in your process? I'm asking as draft review is often offered at large wikis (and sometimes mandatory). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)


Hello, yes this should be high priority I think, suggest to try out the flow where new users submit their sources for evaluation first before writing the full draft; a few things to avoid
  • Avoid developing this internally. You will need to develop something that anyone can edit. I believe it does not need to be an extension. There are many potentials to do this using the wiki markup and index.php parameters. If this is insufficient, the next candidate is a tool at wikimedia cloud or whatever it is called that was toolforge previously; the tools there can be maintained by a group without needing shell access. If this must be an extension, then there must be a wiki for it at toolforge or a vps or something like that, where getting shell access is easy by community consensus.
  • Avoid developing it with focus only on Wikipedia. The new tool needs to be sufficiently flexible to include Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource, and other sister projects.
  • Avoid having only one article creation process. There should be several processes offered to new users either at random or in separate trials each of which lasts about a few months and then the results are analyzed.
  • Avoid missed opportunities to expose new users to the path of helping to patrol new articles and new drafts. Each new contributor must be made aware of the fact that they can help with reviewing new articles. Perhaps any contributor can be informed of it as part of welcome message, and who made about 50 edits can be automatically re-invited in a separate message.
  • Avoid missed opportunities to engage more users in software development and testing. The new software should not only be tested by a wide audience but also it needs to have a 'We are looking for volunteer developers' written somewhere.
Hope it helps. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:43, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
(Highlight Trizek (WMF) for the above) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:54, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you @Gryllida! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
(Longer comment, now that I replied to the previous ones.)
Community configuration will be possible, as it is actually already available for other Growth features (here for this wiki).
Regarding patrolling new articles and new drafts, you mention the welcome message as a point of invitation. Aren't you afraid of inviting too "young" users to review these new articles? A previous comment highlighted that article creation is an advanced task, can't we assume the same for article curation?
Growth development process is done with close collaboration with pilot-wikis. We dedicate ressources to these few wikis, partnering with them on every major step of the project. In exchange, they are early testers of our features. Also, we always measure the impact of our features on wikis through A/B testing, and we improve them depending on the data we collect and the feedback we receive. And volunteers developers are of course welcomed.
And thank you for your thoughts regarding sister projects. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2023 (UTC)


Thank you all for your feedback. Everything has been read and taken into account. We're working on synthesizing your ideas, and those of the other wikis where the question was asked. This will take some time. The results will be published in our next newsletter. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

With thanks - Growth team remains one of the best as comms and consultation. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:54, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much, @Nosebagbear! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
There's a lower-level, partially-related proposal at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates#Proposal: drop 'first article' link from all templates. Have informed them of this high-level discussion and first summary. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:43, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for surfacing this, @Esowteric! Yes, this is definitely related to the main underlying user problems that are guiding the Growth team's Article creation hypothesis:
- Experienced editors / patrollers are feeling overloaded with sub-par articles from newcomers.
- Newcomers are having a bad experience when their articles are deleted.
Growth has at least 6 months of committed work before we can work on anything related to article creation (and we haven't yet committed to working on that project), so if the community decides to make a change, I don't think it will interfere with any experiment we run.
However, that proposal does make me wish it was easier for communities to test the impact of a change like that. It would be very interesting to see if a change in Welcome Template wording actually shifts newcomer behavior! I know there has been some previous studies on the impact of Welcome messages on Wikipedia. Here's one (https://osf.io/bv35h) which seems to prove how difficult it is to actually change new editor behavior: "In a field experiment involving 57,084 new user accounts, we tested the effect of such messages on whether people contributed to Wikipedia and how much time they spent once they did. Consistent with field experiments on other language Wikipedia communities, we did not find an effect." KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:29, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Glad this discussion of life at the coalface helps. In the short time I've been watching the Teahouse, I see maybe four big issues turning up: promotional/POV tone; lack of evidence of notability; lack of reliable sources and/or a profusion of unreliable sources, and COIs. Veterans there will be able to give a far better picture, though. Perhaps you have stats on why drafts are declined or rejected? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
I stumbled across this today: mw:Article Creation Workflow. It's a WMF project from 2012 that was similar to this project. It was shelved due to resource constraints. The "Other documents" section at the bottom may be worth a look. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Early high-level community discussion summary

We recently published the early high-level community discussion summary:

An initial community conversation was started at ar, bn, cs, es, fr and en Wikipedia. We gathered high-level feedback, as we are still early in the strategize and discover phase of this project.

Overall, this project idea received considerable attention and feedback on larger wikis.  It's clear that reviewing articles from newer editors is a task that is especially challenging for larger wikis, and there are many competing ideas for how to more effectively manage this.  Although better guidance in the article creation process may help improve the quality of a new editor’s articles, it would be better to encourage users to improve existing articles first.

Some new editors are only interested in creating articles with a promotional purpose, which is very time consuming for established users. A new article creation system shouldn’t help them to achieve their promotional goals.

The quality of new articles is a real problem, not only because of promotional contents, but also because it is an overwhelming process. Newcomers often struggle with unclear guidance, missing sources, citing unreliable sources, or forget to include citations entirely. As a result, some well-intentioned new editors become discouraged. For moderators, it takes a lot of time to review edge-case notability pages, or to ask for better sources. Increasing the workload of reviewers is not a viable option.

Several possible solutions have been suggested:

  • Decision tree, to help determine if the article should be included in Wikipedia, or if the user is allowed to create one (case of conflicts of interest).
  • Quality gates, to prevent articles with too few citations, promotional wording, etc.
  • Highlight deletion data, to remind users that Wikipedia seeks high-quality content.
  • In-context guidance, with article templates or highlighting examples of existing articles.

All this process should be customizable by each community, to fulfill their needs.

Using drafts more is suggested by many users (on larger wikis). English Wikipedia has made article creation though draft mandatory for new editors On English Wikipedia, the ability to create articles directly in mainspace is restricted to autoconfirmed users, though non-confirmed users and non-registered users can submit a proposed article through the Articles for Creation process.

It's clear we won’t totally automate this process: humans (patrollers, new page reviews, mentors, etc.) play a critical role in engaging newcomers and providing feedback about new articles. Individuals have various perspectives as to how involved experienced editors should be in new article review; some ideas were mentioned around creating a more collaborative draft-writing process, or even a review of sources prior to the article draft review. But whatever feature we consider should ensure we aren't over-burdening experienced editors, and allow for communities to customize the feature to work for their unique needs. It is important to keep the wikis as a collaborative place, where humans interact with each other, and to avoid a bureaucratic effect that would repel newcomers from participating.  

The suggestions and insights shared by the community have been invaluable in identifying the challenges surrounding article review and new editor engagement. The Growth team will carefully consider all the feedback and will incorporate it into a refined project proposal for further community review soon.

Thank you again for your participation, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

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