MediaWiki message delivery 20:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.

If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Community Configuration[edit]

Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.

An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.

In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.

Experiment Results[edit]

Add a Image experiment analysis results

The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:

• The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
• The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
• The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
• A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).

Personalized praise experiment results

This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)

English donors encouraged to try editing

As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)

Future work[edit]

Annual Plan

The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

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

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's newspaper

This newbie seemed particularly slow to get the nessafe. I think that Ibaman made the case, but the heavier kept pushing. Then IK made the point indirectly, but the newbie still didn't get it. I agree with not biting newbies, but this one didn't seem to want to listen. Ground Zero (talk) 02:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's very true; some people are slower than others to learn, but at least we eventually got there. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:26, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will say, though, if I were a newbie, having a bunch of links thrown at me isn't a very good approach for getting me to stay, at least per WP:IJME. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:56, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [5]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [6]
  • a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [7]
  • a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [8]
  • a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [9]
  • a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [10]
  • a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [11]
  • a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [12]
• You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [13]
• Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems

• Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [14]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [15][16]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 03:34, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for creating articles on French national parks. However, I notice that several of them (by you or others) were marked as usable, although they lacked info on fees and permits and on getting around, and had no advice on getting in other than by private vehicle (mostly just mentioning what roads lead there).

In some other park articles:

• "As always with National or Regional Parks in France, there are no entrance fees, and in fact the entrance itself will not be easily located along the road. Only a small signpost generally marks it."
• "Permits can be found at the park administration website." – the link is to the department website, where I didn't find any mention of permits for the park, but my French is lacking, so something could be hiding there.
• "As with all other French national parks, going off a marked road or travel via your vehicle is prohibited in order to preserve the landscape."
• "The code of conduct, Code de Bonne Conduite, can be obtained at the tourist office" – might that be true also for other parks? Is there a general Code de Bonne Conduite covering them all?

If the fees and permits are mostly uniform across all parks, they could be handled in one place, linked from the park articles. I still assume that there are local peculiarities, and without checking for those we shouldn't think an article is usable.

Getting in by bus should be covered and, if bikes are mentioned, some characterisation of the entry route from the perspective of bikers. Also, if one cannot reach the sights by car/bus/bike, that should be mentioned either in Get around or the individual listings, with directions ("a 5-km hike along a marked trail from [bus stop]" or the like). Also, the Camping and Backcountry sections are mostly empty. Are there usually camping sites? Is backcountry camping allowed? I assume you should stay on marked trails, but whether or not should be covered.

–LPfi (talk) 10:29, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed regarding the Fees and permits – I will slowly add them once I get the motivation to do so. About the accommodation, it isn't required for usable articles to have all of those filled in – only a minimum of one listing is required per Wikivoyage:Park article status (that page isn't clear, but it's naturally assumed from Wikivoyage:City article status – otherwise we'd be demoting hundreds of park articles if this weren't the case). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, I won't be very active on this site next month (draining in uni work :-(), but I'll try to slowly fix them. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, this is long-term work and I just happened to notice that you had created some of them. Get around isn't needed for usable, but I think it should be there for high-quality usable articles, which should be aimed for. For Sleep, I think "information on accommodation" means general information rather than one listing.

For a Finnish national park, saying that there are wilderness huts mostly as needed along the marked or otherwise popular routes is much more useful than creating a listing for one of them – which I would think of as gaming the system.

If you can access most sites by car and there's a car-accessible lodging, that might suffice, but if you are supposed to do overnight hikes in other parts of the park, then it is woefully inadequate. Most of those park articles don't tell.

Good luck with the uni!

–LPfi (talk) 12:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I do agree we should aim for high-quality usable articles overall (and it's great that the number of high-quality usable substantially higher than it was in 2013 thanks to people like you). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]