|
Wikipedia talk:Growth (team)Suggestion: Getting started links more visible in user journeyAs a new user I want better visibility and user journey for geting started and tutorials in order to know how to contribute and use complex sites such as wikisource. If Wikimedia wants more contributors we REALLY need to beef-up the getting started pages and make them more visible during the user journey, especially for newly created users accounts. Some of the wikimedia sites such as wikisource have a steep learning curve, and anything that could reduce the curve would help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerberosmansour (talk • contribs) 12:09, 8 August 2014 (UTC) Suggestion: Allowing users to edit through anonymous proxies such as torAs a user from an oppressive country I would like to upload and contribute to wikimedia, while protecting my identity duty personal safety issuess. If the concern with allowing edits through anonymous proxies are concerning vandalism/spam, as a security engineer I would like more granular spam filters to place soft challenges to the user communincating through anonymoous proxies such as tor instead of hard blocks. Example: 1) User must be signed in to edit through anonymous proxies 2) CAPTCHAs/soft challenges are in place for edits 3) Apply repetitional score for IP and user account 4) Require editor to approve edits on sensitive pages (historical events/political figures/company profiles etc..). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerberosmansour (talk • contribs) 12:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC) 3) Additionally controls such as delays between edits 4) If abuse is detected then hard blocks can be in place for the proxy exit node and user account — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerberosmansour (talk • contribs) 12:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC) Suggestion: Turin on SSL for every page which allows signin/signup overlay on each page securelyAs a security engineer I want to be able to browse wikipedia securely, additionally to increase conversion I want to have the ability to create a user profile / login from any page (e.. creating a signin/signup overlay on each page). In order to do so securely, each page needs to be over SSL otherwise it is susceptible to man in the middle attacks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerberosmansour (talk • contribs) 12:34, 8 August 2014 (UTC) Suggestion: Live Help link
I think getting quick live help might keep new editors engaged. We could try adding a link to #wikipedia-en-help on the MediaWiki:Sidebar and call it something like "Live Help". Add it right at the top, above the link to the main page so that it is highly visible. Maybe try some testing on some random pages with newly registered users. I'm not familiar enough to know how to do this technically so that only a specific set of new users would see it. Maybe somebody else could chime in on that. 64.40.54.49 (talk) 11:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: Report Abuse link
Similar to the "Live Help" suggestion above. Add a "Report Abuse" to the MediaWiki:Sidebar that links to an IRC channel staffed by a WMF employee. Many new users feel abused when they violate one of our many policies they don't know about and then get templated or reverted. If they could chat live with a friendly person, they could be taught in a friendly way what they did wrong and how to proceed. Again, this link would only be seen by a random set of newly registered users. 64.40.54.49 (talk) 11:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: Unblock invalid rangeblocks
We have several problems with rangeblocks.
Frequent use: We use rangeblocks at the drop of a hat and without considering the collateral damage they cause. This was Brad's point when he brought the issue up at AN/I. Currently, at 8 million blocked IPs, even if only 1% are caught in the blocks, that's 80,000 people that can't edit. The true number is obviously much higher than that. Inappropriate use for single editors: We often use rangeblocks to stop a single problematic editor and sacrificing everybody else that edits from that entire range. Rangeblocks should be a last resort and only used in a handful of situations and for the shortest possible time. Inappropriate use for web hosts: Another improper use of rangeblocks is for hosting companies. Most web hosts have their entire range indeffed because they may host a proxy in the future.
Also, most web hosts that are rangeblocked are labeled a proxy even though they've never hosted a proxy. This is improper and should not be done. No range should rangeblocked until it has had consistently more problems than we are able to handle by normal means. We already have ProcseeBot (talk · contribs) which automatically finds and blocks proxies almost instantaneously. In addition, we have hundreds of volunteers participating in WP:OP, so there is no need to block entire ranges for some future problem that may or may not happen. Forgotten rangeblocks: Many admins place rangeblocks and then completely forget them. Many times they leave the project with the rangeblocks left in place. When good-faith editors ask for an unblock, the reviewing admins see the invalid "proxy" label and search for any reason to deny the unblock request.
I don't expect anybody to blindly accept what I've said here. So here is a real-life example from one year ago. 67.18.92.167 (talk · contribs) followed all our rules and asked to be unblocked. Three admins looked at the situation and the result was to decline the unblock. Why? Because of the invalid proxy label. I then asked the original blocking admin and he unblocked the entire range. As one can see here, there have been no significant problems since the unblock. In fact, my quick review shows only positive contributions from that entire range and the range remains unblocked to this day.
Perhaps somebody from the WMF could review our rangeblock report and then contact all the blocking admins that have placed rangeblocks. Ask them do a thorough review of their rangeblocks and unblock all those that are not absolutely necessary, specifically stating that the blocking admins should show how Wikipedia was unable to handle the problems from the range in order to justify such a wide ranging block. Also, rangeblocks should be capped at one year maximum. It's easy enough to set a rangeblock and only takes about 30 seconds. I don't think asking admins to spend 30 seconds per year is asking too much. This would alleviate the problems with many invalid rangeblocks especially when address ranges are reassigned. Thanks. 64.40.54.167 (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: New Editor Advocates
I routinely come across this situation
It could work something like this.
We could even go as far as telling the people who template others that they are free to ignore the advocates message and this is only to help with editor retention. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Twinkle mod
Twinkle allows for the rapid fire zapping of newbies like nothing else and there are a number of Wikipedians that play Twinkle like it's a first person shooter game. Removing the ability to zap new editors may help with their retention. I know this idea won't be implemented, but I wanted to suggest it on behalf of all those who hate seeing new editors getting zapped. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Replace template messages
Select a random group of new editors that have been templated. Quickly replace the template with a note saying, "It looks like you could use help with ____" so that the new editor never sees the original template message. This would require a bot in order to do the replacing quickly enough. This obviously wouldn't work on certain things like CSDs and vandalism reverts, so specific situations and templates would need to be defined. Follow this random group for one month and compare them with a similar group that received the normal templates. 64.40.54.68 (talk) 01:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Rate other users
This will certainly be controversial. Comment on edits not editors', that's what we say, but we violate that rule all the time. WP:WQA, WP:RFC/U, WP:ARBCOM and essentially every notice board are all about rating other users. We should allow people to rate other users WITHOUT using words, because words always end up enflaming the situation. Sure, this could be abused. People will make sockpuppets or have meat puppets help them rate, but that's not the point. The point is to allow people to vent without using words. It helps let off steam and diffuse a situation. People only get a single vote as it were, but they can come back and change it any time. The tool could use a slider, or check boxes or radio buttons. We could have it show an average of all the ratings for a user or have it show nothing at all. But we should not show who has done a specific rating or what each specific rating is. If we decide to show an average, then users should start off with a single rating of ten issued by "the system" so that they don't start at zero. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 04:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Use article rating to show users how much quality they write
Suggestion: Ask for new editors
In general, people don't like banner ads, so this should be a text only notice. Place it at the top of pages and ask new editors to join. It could say; ""We are looking for new editors. We need your help. Click here." Have a link that points to the Teahouse or a sub-section of it. There we could help users register an account and set up a user page. We could teach them the basics of editing and let them know about our notability and verification policies. We could have their new user page include a link back to the Teahouse in case they need more help or have further questions. We could also teach them how to use talk pages and sign their posts. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 04:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Post editor loss updates
Editor loss is controlled much more by the Wikipedian community than it is by the WMF. We need to keep the community informed about how well we are doing. The WMF set a goal of 150,000 active editors by 2015. We need a graph of showing editors over the last year and showing where we should be, something like strategy:File:Wikimedia Participation Goal.png. We should also present the raw numbers, perhaps something like this.
Two years ago, the enwp community didn't care about editor loss. A year ago, a measurable but small percentage was concerned about losing editors. Today, more and more people in the community talk about editor loss. We need to keep the community informed and up-to-date on the editor loss situation. I'd suggest Maggie (or somebody) post a summary each month at WP:VPM with a link to a more detailed report at the WMF blog or whereever. I'd also let the staff at the Signpost know in case they want to report on it each month. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 05:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Create a workspace area for new users
This idea has been titled Workspace editing as detailed here and is a possible future phase of NPT. This really isn't a quick and easy experiment, but I think it would have the biggest impact on editor retention of any possible idea as it brings Wikipedia back to its fundamentals of why it has been a sucessful project. Workspace editing values a user's contributions, which is what new editors desire more than anything else. People don't want to volunteer if they feel their efforts are valueless and thrown away. They want to feel they've contributed something of worth that other people may find useful. That is the main reason good-faith editors contribute, because they feel they are contributing something that has value. This can be seen in the remarks made by several people in this report. There are many other benefits of Workspace editing that I might detail later. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 05:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: Referencing tool
Create a tool to find and properly format references. The basic idea is to have a searchbox to search for references. Once a reference is found, the tool would bring up a fill-in-the-blank type form that an editor could fill out. A "Save" button would format the citation and add it to the article.
We have lots and lots of automated tools that help us to stop bad people from contributing. We have very few tools that help good-faith editors to make helpful contributions. That seems backwards if we want to encourage new users. Many new editors are discouraged when their articles are deleted. Most deletions happen because articles don't have references to show notability. Creating a tool to help with referencing may help solve part of this problem. It's possible that a very basic tool could be implemented quickly. The tool could build on the {{find}} template and have searches of newspapers and books using Google and/or Yahoo. A more advanced tool could add several automated features such as automatically filling in fields. Perhaps it could use code from WP:REFLINKS and Citation bot (talk · contribs) if the authors were willing to donate their code. The tool could format the references to WP:LDR to make it easier for new users to edit the articles. A much more advanced version could allow an editor to click a citation and drag it to a sentence, which would add the citation's ref name link to that sentence. This would make it much easier for a new editor to show an article's notability, thus making it less likely to be deleted. The tool would also allow experienced editors to improve existing articles by adding more and/or better citations. 64.40.57.9 (talk) 06:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: Good vs Good-faith
Have Maggie repeatedly remind the community that only editors actively trying to harm the project should be treated accordingly. And that users making mistakes are still good-faith users and should be helped and treated with respect and courtesy.
The Wikipedian community has become more exclusive than inclusive—because of its focus on quality—and is failing to bring in the experts that it wants help from to achieve that quality. This study classifies new users in to four broad categories; Vandal, Bad-faith, Good-faith and Golden. The community classifies those same groups quite differently.
When the community thinks about good-faith editors, they think of editors that are able to produce good results on their first edit. This is very different from an editor that is attempting to produce good results on their first edit. The community no longer understands that an editor attempting to do good—but failing—is still a good-faith editor. They label good-faith editors as worthless and not desired by the community and they treat them the same way the treat bad-faith users and vandals. In essence, they have moved the goal post and created a new and unintended barrier to entry. That makes us less inclusive and drives our numbers down. This conversation is an example of that that mindset. Some of the comments left at this report are another blatant example. We don't know if a new user making a mistake is a youthful editor or a seasoned professor at a distinguished university. We treat them all as undesirables. We should re-educate the community about what a good-faith editor is. We should help these good-faith editors learn from their mistakes and get past them so they can succeed at being productive members of the community Side note: One of the best decisions the WMF has ever made was to bring Moonriddengirl on board as Community Liaison. Maggie has the respect of the community because of her many years of dedicated service to CCI. She is calm and patient and knows how to interact with the community in a very productive manner. This is a task that only Maggie can accomplish, in my opinion. The community has become indifferent and even actively hostile towards helpful information coming from the WMF. A very sad situation that reflects poorly on the community, But that is not true in Maggie's case. Maggie could remind the community of the difference between good-faith users and bad-faith users and that we can grow good-faith editors in to great editors. Perhaps she could leave periodic notes at WP:VPM or, if she's up to it, write a series of short articles for the Signpost using data and reports the WMF has been publishing. I hate adding to her workload, which is tremendous, as are all the workloads for WMF staff, but I think she's the only one that could accomplish this task. 64.40.54.43 (talk) 16:11, 2 May 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Promising new editor
This has two basic parts.
I occasionally run across a new editor that is very promising. They've learned a great deal about how to do things properly in a short amount of time and shown no signs of ill will towards the project (i.e. not vandals or bad-faith and show no signs of COI, NPOV or any other problems). It would benefit the community to encourage these editors with some type of award, as they show promise. It would also be good to let RCPers and NPPers know that this subset of editors should be dealt with in an encouraging way. That their edits should not be reverted without a close look at the situation. And their articles should not be tagged for deletion without a thorough application of WP:BEFORE. We could create a new userright called Promising (like rollback & autopatrol), but it would be a flag only and not provide any additional tools. Promising users could be submitted to WP:RFPERM like any other userright. An admin would review their contributions and, if warranted, set the flag. The flag would set a color in RCP and NPP lists so that patrollers would know these are good users and they should be careful before tagging them or whatnot. 64.40.57.47 (talk) 18:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC) Suggestion: Create Wikitainment
Note: this is one of two suggestions to improve WMF/community relations by giving the community what it wants. Wikitainment is an old suggestion for a sister project that would host entertainment-related topics. Much of the remaining community at enwp views entertainment related subjects as unwanted or so called fancruft. These articles could be moved away from enwp to a new sister project.
The biggest untapped source of new editors are fans of entertainment related subjects (movies, music, TV, etc.). This group of potential editors are very often motivated to write about their favorite topics. Attracting this group of editors has the potential to dramatically increase the editor population. The community, however, view this group of editors as completely unwanted. They feel the contributions from these fans degrade the quality of the encyclopedia. Some members of the community actively discourage contributions from fans and would like nothing more than to remove all entertainment related subjects from the encyclopedia. By starting a new sister project, specifically for entertainment articles, it would give the community what it wants (the removal of fancruft). It would also give the fans what they want, a new place to edit and the ability to set their own rules for article inclusion and other things, such as a lower standard for notability. If the WMF were to set up a sister project like this—to remove the so called fancruft—the community might view this as a positive step in the right direction and be willing to be less bitey towards new editors an more welcoming. 64.40.54.53 (talk) 08:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: "Wikipedia wants you" campaign
Note: this is second of two suggestions to improve WMF/community relations. Ask the community what types of new editors they want and then actively encourage that group of people to sign up and contribute.
Much of the community knows about the editor loss problem, but they feel attracting new editors only brings in unwanted new users so they oppose such efforts. The community feels the only new editors that should be allowed in are experts in a specific subject or expert writers to help improve our quality. This is an opportunity for the WMF to give the community what it wants, experts. This would combine two ideas above, #Suggestion: Ask for new editors and #Suggestion: Promising new editor. Start off by putting up a notice at the village pump about editor loss and then ask the community to give suggestions on what specific types of editors they would like to see join up. This could be in the form of a straw poll asking about professional writers, physicists, medical professionals, etc.. Then create a banner ad campaign similar to Uncle Sam's "I want you" poster.
The blank could be filled in with the community's suggestions, such as professional writers, engineers, or whatever. It could link to a short story like this; "I'm John Doe, an engineer. I joined Wikipedia to help improve engineering articles. I encourage other engineers to join up." The WMF could actively solicit universities and industry for experts in their field These new editors could come in under a project, like the education projects, and could be given help creating a user page explaining that they are experts in their field. A new userright, "Expert", could be assigned to these users similar to autopatrol bit. It would show up in special:newpages and special:recentchanges to inform patrollers not to delete or revert their contributions. This has the possibility of making the community more welcoming of new users and more sympathetic towards efforts to increase our user base. 64.40.54.53 (talk) 08:35, 10 May 2012 (UTC) Q: Does power corrupt?I ran across a strange situation from 2006, which lead me to dig through some old AN and RFC/U archives. I noticed a user had been creating a number of small articles and stubs that a second person was concerned about. The second person felt the first person should be spending more time expanding the articles they were creating instead of making new articles. The second person's concern snowballed and a newly promoted admin jumped in to defend the first person. As the second person kept voicing concerns, the new admin started blocking the first person, which eventually lead to the new admin indeffing the first person. This happened over a period of several months, but I was able look at the whole situation in a few hours. So It seemed very striking that the new admin, who was helpful in the beginning, ended up indeffing the person they were trying to help. All this got me wondering about the power corrupts idea, so I plotted the number of new admins over time using the data from User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month and it showed what appears to be a peak in admins about a year before the peak in editors that is shown File:Enwp retention vs active editors.png. Not that there's anything here to work on. I just found it curious, so I thought I'd share it. 64.40.54.127 (talk) 02:53, 15 May 2012 (UTC) Internationalize CaptchasThe likely single most obstacle for a non-English writer becoming an editor of Wikipedia is that they are unable to solve the captchas. So they would never register. Imagine, you sincerely got captchas in Arabic or Cyrillic script in the English Wikipedia. Your registerd editor base was likely way unter ten percent of what it is now. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:49, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
First experiment live :)See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#New feature experiment. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: Nuke it from orbit
Hardblock every registered account and their IP for one year. Oversight all policies, guidelines and essays. Oversight all tags (the negative templates used on user talk pages and articles). Remove the NPP and RCP code from the software. Keep everything else and let a new batch of users start fresh and decide how things should work.
This suggestion certainly isn't going to happen anytime soon, but it may be the only solution if things don't change. I made a prediction on meta or somewhere a year or two ago. It said that Wikipedia is going to get meaner and nastier as time goes on and that more and more people are going to leave and new users will refuse to sign up. Over the last few months, I've seen ardent deletionists accusing other ardent deletionists of being too deletionist. This is one of my predictions that has come to pass. My fear is that in 5 or so years, Wikipedia will be almost completely locked down and there will only be 100 or so highly active people. They will be the meanest and nastiest of the bunch. At that point, I think this will be a valid suggestion and I would strongly urge the WMF to nuke it from orbit when that happens. 64.40.54.60 (talk) 06:00, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: bring back my favourite tool!Until about a month ago there used to be a tool in articles' revision history pages that appeared just left of the "revision history search" tool (I can't remember its exact name, though). This tool used bar- and line- graphs to chart how frequently articles were edited, and how the size of articles had grown over time. It also listed other statistical information, including who created the article, when it was created, the average time between edits on the page, and pie charts showing the proportion of user-vs-IP edits, minor-vs-major edits, and the proportion of edits by the most-active editors. This tool was very reinforcing for me at the time that I originally became active in editing Wikipedia: being able to visually see how articles grew and changed both historically and as a result of my own work made the experience much more enjoyable for me. If you are really serious about improving Wikipedia, please find someone to restore this tool, or have someone create another one similar to it. I would do this myself, if I had any idea how or how to learn.Ferox Seneca (talk) 21:19, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion: take advantage of doodle at googleI'm kind of running a tiny project at pt.wikipedia to editor engagement using a template banner similar to a {{under construction}} in articles related to the doodle at google. For example, today (24th July) we have Amelia Earhart and we will notice a huge incoming of readers comming to wikipedia to read about her. I think we should take advantage of this and try to catch reader's attention to WP:Welcome or other page. I'm registering my results here if you want to take a look. So far I don't have any improvement in editor engagement but I insist we should try a bit more. For example, Alan Turing's doodle last month had 2 million visits in just one day!OTAVIO1981 ([[User talk:|talk]]) 12:16, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Second experiment announcementSee: Wikipedia:Village Pump (technical)#Feature experiment for new Wikipedians. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:20, 30 July 2012 (UTC) Suggestion/Bug: Getting Started Edit ConflictsHi, I tried out the new Getting Started tour and ran into an edit conflict. This seems pretty undesirable for new editors and I'm wondering if there's sufficient variety, randomization in the presentation of articles to avoid that being a common occurrence. Otherwise, I really like the work that you're doing! Ocaasi t | c 18:42, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Is it a good idea to offer up problematic BLPs to "getting started" clientele?I just discovered this project as a result of recent edits to Caroline Hoxby, which is currently being served up by this tool. That article is on my watchlist due to a recent history of BLP issues and edit warring. Given the problems the page already has as a BLP article, I don't think it's a good idea to ask newbies to fool around with it. (Furthermore, I'm not sure why it's tagged for grammar issues, as the issues there are mostly related to content.) Can the universe of potentially suggested articles be modified to exclude BLPs (and other articles with similar issues)? --Orlady (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Step 1: Identify the problemI'm using this quote because I can't put it any better.
The full discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 7#Civility, Editor Retention, Hostility, and Burnout-- summed up had only 6 replies, the first of which justitfied the battleground actions and nobody suggested solutions.
It is my belief that this will need to be addressed in order to solve the editor retention problem. I'll post more later. 64.40.54.78 (talk) 09:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Suggestion: Fourth "Get started" option - Translate@Steven (WMF): A new user has made an interesting proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_11#Fourth "Get started" option - Translate, regarding the WP:Getting started feature. I've left some basic feedback there, but I was wondering if this might actually be an ingenious possibility... If a new user has SUL accounts on another language project, perhaps the translation option could be added as a suggestion for them? –Quiddity (talk) 16:09, 25 June 2013 (UTC) Special:GettingStarted doesn't yet appear optimal. How to improve it?New accounts are ushered into Special:GettingStarted, which says fixing spelling and grammar errors is the easiest. Then if one tries to do this, one is taken to a random article tagged with {{Copy edit}}, with this as an example. But a big problem here is that there is a contradiction between the instructions and what the template actually says. Getting started instructions of "This aritcle has spelling and grammar errors you can fix" contradicts the tag, which says "This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling". How to fix/modify/improve this feature? There is an option for "help" but I also think there should be a way to find a human being, for example at the Teahouse. Biosthmors (talk) 19:54, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
New team nameFor the curious, check out Eloquence's announcement about the name change and more. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:31, 19 September 2013 (UTC) A/B testing new version of GettingStartedHey all, Today we deployed a new version of the onboarding UX we've been working on for some time, using GettingStarted and GuidedTour. This is in "silent" mode right now, and on Monday we'll be flipping the switch to deliver it for 50% of new signups on English Wikipedia, as part of an A/B test. To see what this looks like, just add ?gettingStartedReturn=true to any link on enwiki, like editable pages or non-editable pages. As our specification describes, this test version with calls to action will be delivered to new users when they are redirected back to where they were prior to signup. The control in our A/B test will be sending all new users through Special:GettingStarted. Our main hypotheses are listed on our research documentation. Any ideas for improvement you might have are welcome. You can see what I'm currently thinking about updating on our public project management tool, Trello. Many thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:18, 4 October 2013 (UTC) BTW, this test is live now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:23, 9 October 2013 (UTC) The Wikipedia Adventure, alpha-testers neededHi folks, I've been working for the past 7 months on an interactive guided tour for new editors called The Wikipedia Adventure, as part of a WMF Individual Engagement Grant. The game is an experiment in teaching our aspiring future editors in an education but playful way.
If you're interested, please add your name below and have at it. You can post feedback to WP:TWA/Feedback. Thanks and cheers! Ocaasi t | c 20:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC) I'm interested and on the bug-hunt. Will report back this week
Smart watchlists for WikiProjects would make people happy and productive—which would naturally faclitate growthSee my idea here. Is this something the team is working on? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Helping WikiProjects know about all cleanup templates within their areaI think this is a growth-based idea, as it supports collaboration. See this thread, please. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC) Suggestions... lots of themHello, I'm interested in the work your team is doing on engaging new users, as this is the area I primarily contribute to on Wikipedia. I first joined Wikipedia 4 and a half years ago, aged 11, and my first contribution was reverted automatically by a bot because I added a reference to an informative website that happened to be hosted by Yahoo GeoCities during a complete re-hauling an article. I was left with the cold, superior-sounding message: although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links has been reverted. After panicking for a bit I gathered up the courage to undo the bot's revision and no-one went and stopped me. In fact the link that the bot wrongly blocked is still in the external links section of the article today. I've come a long way since and (aside from being stupid and forgetting my old password), nothing has ever brought me close to leaving. I have a few suggestions that I think would help prevent new editors going through a first experience like mine, and also help soften the steep learning curve on Wikipedia. One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is the sheer volume of duplicating and overlapping welcoming pages that only serves to confuse new users (Help:Getting started, Wikipedia:Tutorial, Wikipedia:Introduction, Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia and the special page 'getting started' that you recently set up). This problem stems from the very nature of Wikipedia - the lack of central control - and other areas such as article quality assessment are also in a similar shambles. There are loads of great projects like the Teahouse, but unless an invite is manually placed on a new user's talk page it's likely that they won't find out about it until after they've passed the stage where it's useful to them. What I feel new users need is a brief introduction that automatically appears when they first log and can be returned to easily (so they don't have to search it out) which clearly explains what they can do on Wikipedia, provides easy links and isn't too dumbed down. The new getting started special page and guided tours are great, but they just throw new users straight in without explanation - there needs to be a brief introduction beforehand (I personally don't like the fact that they don't have any mention of what to do if new users want to add new content, articles or facts, either). The standard welcome template has the same problem, it just contains a few links to various help pages without giving a clear and concise introduction to what Wikipedia is all about and explaining what each of its links contain. I've gone ahead and written my own brief introduction to Wikipedia, the kind of thing that I would have found useful when I first joined. I'm not a programmer or HTML-savvy, but I've also made a mock-up of what it would look like when formatted in a way similar to the current special:gettingstarted page. I hope you consider implementing a similar introduction, as at the moment there's nothing to explain to new users key ideas behind Wikipedia (unless they happen to be be pointed to the five pillars by luck). I expect most new users leave because they don't realise that reverted edits aren't personal, that they don't have to know all the guidelines before starting and that they have just as much power to influence Wikipedia as the admins and editors who make hundreds and thousands of edits. To follow this up I think that users should have their talk pages automatically created and a message left when they sign up so that they get the 'you have a new message' notification after leaving the welcome screen, familiarising them with their talk page. The message could be something along the lines of 'Welcome to your user talk page, this is where you can communicate with other Wikipedians, work together, discuss ideas and become acquainted with fellow editors', plus an explanation of how to sign posts and indent replies. This, coupled with the welcome splash screen would effectively replace the unreliable method of manually leaving welcome templates for new users, which often misses out many editors. I had a look at your planned projects, and I really like the sound of your plan to revamp the new article creation system. However, I think it is probably more important - and probably easier to implement as well - to first add a good welcoming screen to Wikipedia as new users more often start by making contributions to existing articles than by creating their own (plus my proposed introduction page already includes a short section on creating your first article). As for your plans to improve the rate of anonymous users signing up, why not add a similar message when they click edit on an article? A splash screen that welcomes them to Wikipedia, suggests they familiarise themselves with the five pillars of Wikipedia and informs them on the benefits of signing up, giving them the option to continue editing anonymously or create an account. I've drafted my own idea of how this would appear as well. I don't know what is technically feasible within Wikipedia's structure, but maybe this could be set up to only appear the first time an anonymous user clicks edit (or maybe after X edits if you're looking to retain frequent editors), and not again if they choose not to sign up. One last suggestion, (completely unrelated to my proposals to add welcoming screens, I promise)! I feel that the messages that are left by bots that revert contributions (such as the one I received after my first edit) are way too harsh on new editors. Perhaps their messages could be rewritten, or the bots' codes could be changed to avoid very reverting new editors straight away. I look forward to hearing what you think of my suggestions and discussing them further if you're interested. Cheers, Jr8825 • Talk 09:48, 11 January 2014 (UTC) P.S. If you ever what another member of your team for new ideas and writing help explanations (not paid obviously) I'm always willing! ;)
QueryI was looking at the Meta page and all of the great studies that this team has been working on. It was just unclear to me how you will go about implementing what you learned to the various Wiki Projects. I subscribe to the Wiki Research newsletter, am on several Wikipedia email lists and some of your work is still unfamiliar to me. How are you going about putting the insights you've gained into practice or, at least, circulate your findings to the larger Wikipedias community? Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 03:03, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
|
