Research has shown that newcomers struggle to edit and continue editing Wikipedia because of three main challenges: technical, conceptual, and cultural. They currently do not have access to the resources they need to surmount those challenges. To give these things to newcomers, the WMF Growth team has built three interconnected features, described in more detail below:
- Newcomer tasks and Structured tasks: a feed of task suggestions that help newcomers learn to edit. Newcomers have been making productive edits through this feed! Structured tasks are a potential new type of task that the team is considering.
- Newcomer homepage: a special page that hosts the "newcomer tasks" and the ability to ask questions to a mentor.
- Help panel: a platform to provide resources to newcomers while they are editing and the ability to ask questions to a mentor.
These features are currently available to experienced users only. See mw:Growth/Feature summary#Try the features for instructions on how to do so.
In November 2020, we published results from a controlled experiment that showed that the Growth features statistically improve newcomer outcomes. Because of these results, we believe that all Wikipedias should consider adopting these features.
It is currently available on over 30 Wikipedias. All of these features are available on both desktop and mobile. It is also possible for experienced users to turn them on and use them.
Now that we are expanding to more wikis, we want to start talking about these features with English Wikipedia and ask for input. As said above, we are constantly iterating and developing. We hope English Wikipedia will take on these features at some point, but before any deployments happen, we will make sure that we have built something that will work on this wiki, and that all deployments will be in line with the community's preferences. We know that English Wikipedia has many existing efforts to help newcomers, like the Teahouse and automated welcome messages. We would be sure to make sure our team's features work well alongside those.
To sign up to be a mentor, go to Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list. Make sure to format it as * [[User:Example]]|Description here (no wikitext or links or it will break)
. Go to mw:Growth/Communities/How to introduce yourself as a mentor#How to add yourself to the mentor list for more information on how to do this.
As you read this page, please leave any questions, ideas, or reactions on the Talk page. You can also join in more detailed discussions of the features and plans on Talk pages on mediawiki.org. You can also sign up for our team's newsletter here.
Background and results
This page gives a quick outline of the work of the WMF Growth team, which aims to increase the retention of new editors. The team has been working since July 2018, and primarily pilots experimental features in four Wikipedias: Czech, Bengali, Arabic, and Vietnamese. In 2021, we are continuing to iterate and develop the feature set, but we also know that we have already developed features that have a positive impact on new editors. For that reason, we are planning to deploy to more wikis during 2021. (Note: when we say "new editors" or "newcomers", we're talking about users who have newly created accounts -- not anonymous editors.)
In an experiment with Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Korean Wikipedias, we've seen that this set of experimental features prompts newcomers to be more engaged in the wiki and make early productive edits. Importantly, in addition to the statistical results below, communities have been having positive experiences with these features. No wikis that have begun using the Growth features have requested to turn them off.
In order to understand the impact of Growth features, and specifically "newcomer tasks", we deployed the features in a controlled experiment. Some newcomers received the features (the treatment group) and some did not (the control group). The experiment lasted for six months.
In general, the analysis showed that the Growth features improve outcomes for newcomers. Below are the most important points.
- Newcomers who get the Growth features are 11.6% more likely to make a first article edit (i.e. to be "activated").
- Newcomers who get the Growth features are 26.7% more likely to make a first unreverted article edit.
- We believe they are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another article edit on a different day).
- The features also increase edit volume (i.e. number of edits) without reducing constructiveness (i.e. if edits are reverted).
We believe that these results confirm that the Growth features, in particular newcomer tasks, lead newcomers to edit more and lead newcomers to stay on the wiki for longer.
For more information on these experiment results, see this page on mediawiki.org.
List of wikis
As of April 2021, the features are deployed on these Wikipedias
- French
- Spanish
- Russian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Arabic
- Japanese
- Swedish
- Simple English
- Persian
- Czech
- Korean
- Turkish
- Hebrew
- Vietnamese
- Albanian
- Norwegian
- Romanian
- Hungarian
- Ukrainian
- Bengali
- Armenian
- Danish
- Thai
- Croatian
- Indonesian
- Hindi
- Tamil
- Malay
- Telugu
- Serbian
- Basque
- Esperanto
Newcomer tasks
We are most excited about this feature, because it is prompting newcomers to make productive edits. This is a workflow that suggests articles to edit, shown to users via the "suggested edits module" on the newcomer homepage. Newcomers are able to choose from different types of edits (based on maintenance templates) and filter to topics of interest (based on ORES models). They then can choose from a feed of articles to work on. Once on an article, the help panel will provide guidance on how to complete the edit. Communities will be able to choose whether this workflow nudges newcomers toward the visual editor or the wikitext editor.
In 2021, the Growth team is building new editing workflows that are meant to be smaller and easier for newcomers to accomplish, especially from mobile devices. These are called "structured tasks". As of June 2021, we have deployed the first structured task for adding wikilinks to four Wikipedias (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali). In it, an algorithm suggests to newcomers words or phrases that could be good wikilinks. We are also considering a structured task around adding images from Commons to Wikipedia articles. We hope community members can join discussions here about how to proceed with this work. You can also leave thoughts about the project on the talk page on this wiki, if you prefer.
Results so far
- As of February 2021, 10,882 newcomers have made 71,442 edits through this workflow.
- They are making copyedits, adding links, and sometimes adding new content with references.
- About 15% of these edits are reverted, which is about the same share as edits made by newcomers outside this workflow.
- 13% of these users make 5 or more suggested edits.
- 9% of these users make suggested edits on 3 or more days.
For more information about newcomer tasks, see this page on mediawiki.org.
Newcomer homepage
This special page hosts the newcomer tasks workflow, and contains other modules that give newcomers access to the most important things they need to see on their first day. After creating their account, newcomers see a popup (and some other notifications) encouraging them to visit their homepage, which is accessible through the link to their username along the top of their browser window. Though the team is still experimenting with different modules, here are modules that may appear on the homepage:
- Start module: encourages users to do a tutorial, add or confirm their email address, and create a userpage.
- Help module: lists links to commonly visited help pages.
- Mentorship module: assigns each newcomer an experienced user, and gives an easy way to post questions to the mentor's talk page. Mentors volunteer to take part by signing up.
- Impact module: shows newcomers the number of pageviews on each of the articles they have edited.
- Suggested edits module: see "Newcomer tasks" above.
Results so far
- The majority of newcomers visit their homepage, and many of them return to visit their homepage on subsequent days.
- 3,262 mentor questions have been asked so far.
- The homepage controlled experiment showed that the homepage increases the number of newcomers who have confirmed email addresses. It also showed that newcomers tend to follow calls-to-action, such as the call to create their userpage or contact their mentor. It did not, however, show an increase in the number of newcomers who edit or return (this experiment was analyzed before newcomer tasks was deployed).
For more information about the newcomer homepage, see this page on mediawiki.org.
Help panel
This is a box that newcomers can open while they are editing. It does four things:
- Guides newcomers while they do newcomer tasks.
- Lists links to commonly visited help pages.
- Allows newcomers to search for other help and policy pages.
- Allows newcomers to ask a question to their mentor.
The help panel appears in both the wikitext and visual editors. When we deploy this feature, we make sure that a wiki's existing help desk (or Teahouse) will work with the features, and that experienced users watching the help desk are willing to receive the incoming questions.
Results so far
- About 20% of newcomers who see the help panel open it up, and about 50% of those who open it up interact with it.
- The help panel on its own did not show increases in newcomers editing or returning, but we have retained this feature because we will be using it to provide guidance as part of the promising newcomer tasks flow described above.
For more information about the help panel, see this page on mediawiki.org.