NEWSLETTERS I NEED TO READ
Help Project newsletter : Issue 1
The Help Project Newsletter Issue I - May 2012 |
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Hi, and welcome to the first issue of the Help Project newsletter! This is a new monthly initiative to keep project members and the wider community informed about our work to improve Wikipedia's help pages. Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. I've initially sent this to all existing members of the project, if you don't wish to receive the newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name. Conversely if you've just stumbled on this newsletter (perhaps through talk page stalking) and want to receive it in future then please feel free to sign up! |
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Help Project newsletter : Issue 2
The Help Project Newsletter Issue II - June 2012 |
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Hello from the Help Project, and welcome to the second issue of our newsletter! The biggest project I've been working on this month has been a large survey of users to find out what they think of our current help pages. Preliminary results from this are now available, although there are more responses trickling in from the lower edit count groups since a batch of email invitations were recently sent out. Finalised results and further analysis should be posted next week. Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name. |
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Help Project newsletter : Issue 3
The Help Project Newsletter Issue III - August 2012 |
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Welcome to the (slightly delayed) third issue of the Help Project newsletter. The past month has once again been a busy one for my fellowship. The full results and conclusions from the extensive user survey on help pages are now available, and make interesting reading. These do confirm a number of our suspicions about Wikipedia help, and suggest that the current plan for the remainder of the fellowship is a sound approach. Also last month I was fortunate enough to attend Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC, where I gave a presentation about help pages and the aforementioned survey results. You can find the slides from this on Commons. Wikimania was also a great opportunity for many discussions with staff and community members, and these brought up some interesting ideas which I hope to follow up on. One of the things much discussed was the planned tutorial pages. I've been working on a new design for them which can be seen at User:The wub/sandbox/1, please let me know what you think (especially if you spot any bugs!). Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name. |
The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)
Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.
In this issue:
- Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
- Research: The most recent DR data
- Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
- Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
- DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
- Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
- Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?
--The Olive Branch 18:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
The Tea Leaf - Issue Six
Hi! Welcome to the sixth edition of The Tea Leaf, the official newsletter of the Teahouse!
- Teahouse serves over 700 new editors in six months on Wikipedia! Since February 27, 741 new editors have participated at the Teahouse. The Q&A board and the guest intro pages are more active than ever.
- Automatic invites are doing the trick: 50% more new editors visiting each week. Ever since HostBot's automated invite trial phase began we've seen a boost in new editor participation. Automating a baseline set of invitations also allows Teahouse hosts to focus on serving hot cups of help to guests, instead of spending countless hours inviting.
- Guests to the Teahouse continue to edit more & interact more with other community members than non-Teahouse guests according to six month metrics. Teahouse guests make more than twice the article edits and edit more talk pages than other new editors.
- New host process implemented which encourages anyone to get started as a Teahouse host in a few easy steps. Stop by the hosts page and become a Teahouse host today!
- Host lounge renovations nearing completion. Working closely with Teahouse hosts, we've made some major renovations to the Teahouse Host Lounge - the main hangout and resource space for hosts. Learn more about the improvements here.
As always, thanks for supporting the Teahouse project! Stop by and visit us today!
You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here. EdwardsBot (talk) 00:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Help Project newsletter : Issue 4
The Help Project Newsletter Issue IV - September 2012 |
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Hi, and welcome to the fourth issue of the Help Project newsletter. It's been another busy month in the world of Wikipedia help. The results from the in-person usability tests conducted as part of the help pages fellowship have been released. There are no great surprises here, the tests confirmed that people have trouble with the existing help system, and people looking for help on the same topic often end up at wildly different pages. Editors who experienced a tutorial and/or edited a sandbox as part of their learning were noticeably more confident when editing a real article. Drawing on that, three new "Introduction to" tutorials for new users have been created: referencing, uploading images and navigating Wikipedia. These join the popular existing introductions to policies and guidelines and talk pages. Feel free to edit them, but please do remember that the idea is to keep them simple and as free from extraneous details as possible. All three have been added to Help:Getting started, which is intended to be the new focal point for new editors, and will also be seeing a redesign soon. In other news, the Article Feedback Tool (AFT) can now be used to collect feedback on help pages. By default it has been deployed to all pages in the Help: namespace. It can be disabled on any page by adding Category:Article Feedback Blacklist, or enabled for pages in other namespaces by adding Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. Once a page has AFT applied, you can add feedback using the form which appears at the bottom of it. Feedback can be reviewed by clicking "View feedback" in the sidebar, or the "Feedback from my watched pages" link at the top of your watchlist. I'm now entering the final month of my fellowship, and will be focusing my efforts on making much needed improvements to Help:Contents, the main entrance point to our help system. It's been a pleasure working as a fellow, and I just want to thank all the people who have helped me or offered advice over the past months. That definitely won't be the end of my involvement in the Help Project though, I'll be sticking around as a volunteer and continuing to write this newsletter. Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name. |
8 October 2012 (UTC)
WikiWomen's Collaborative: Come join us (and check out our new website)!
WikiWomen - We need you! |
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Hi Carolmooredc! The WikiWomen's Collaborative is a group of women from around the world who edit Wikipedia, contribute to its sister projects, and support the mission of free knowledge. We recently updated our website, created new volunteer positions, and more! Get involved by:
Thanks for editing Wikipedia, and we look forward to you being a part of the Collaborative! -- EdwardsBot (talk) 00:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC) |
The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven
Hello again! We have some neat updates about the Teahouse:
- We’ve added badges! Teahouse awards is a pilot project to learn how acknowledgement impacts engagement and retention in Teahouse and Wikipedia.
- We’ve got a new WikiLove Badge script that makes giving badges quick and easy. You can add it here. You can give out badges to thank helpful hosts, welcome guests, acknowledge great questions and more.
- Come join the experiment and let us know what you think!
- You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here
Thanks again! Ocaasi 02:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Help Project newsletter : Issue 5
The Help Project Newsletter Issue V - January 2013 |
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Hello again from the Help Project! In the last newsletter (which was quite a while ago sorry!) I talked about my fellowship and the plans for improving the main portal page, Help:Contents. Well I'm sad to say that my fellowship is now over, but very happy to say that the proposed improvements to that page have been completed and implemented. Do check it out if you haven't already. Another important and frequently used help page, Wikipedia:Contact us, has also seen a significant revamp. You may recognise the design inspiration from the new tutorial pages. In project news, we now have a subscription to the "article alerts" service. Any deletion nominations, move discussions, or requests for comments on pages within the Help Project's scope will now show up at Wikipedia:Help Project/Article alerts. So that's definitely a page which project members might want to watch. Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name. |
The Tea Leaf - Issue Seven (special Birthday recap)
It's been a full year since the Teahouse opened, and as we're reflecting on what's been accomplished, we wanted to celebrate with you.
Teahouse guests and hosts are sharing their stories in a new blog post about the project.
1 year statistics for Teahouse visitors compared to invited non-visitors from the pilot:
Metric | Control group | Teahouse group | Contrast |
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Average retention (weeks with at least 1 edit) | 5.02 weeks | 8.57 weeks | 1.7x retention |
Average number of articles edited | 58.7 articles | 116.9 edits | 2.0x articles edited |
Average talk page edits | 36.5 edits | 85.6 edits | 2.4x talk page edits |
Average article space edits | 129.6 edits | 360.4 edits | 2.8x article edits |
Average total edits (all namespaces) | 182.1 edits | 532.4 edits | 2.9x total edits |
Over the past year almost 2000 questions have been asked and answered, 669 editors have introduced themselves, 1670 guests have been served, 867 experienced Wikipedians have participated in the project, and 137 have served as hosts. Read more project analysis in our CSCW 2013 paper
Last month January was our most active month so far! 78 profiles were created, 46 active hosts answered 263 questions, and 11 new hosts joined the project.
Come by the Teahouse to share a cup of tea and enjoy a Birthday Cupcake! Happy Birthday to the Teahouse and thank you for a year's worth of interest and support :-)
- -- Ocaasi and the rest of the Teahouse Team 20:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)