Hi everyone,
Last week the Editor Engagement Experiments team deployed a new extension
to all wikis, Extension:Campaigns (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Campaigns).
The campaigns extension does one thing: if you add "campaign=example" to a
link pointing at the account creation form, it logs the campaign name at
the time of signup.
This capability has been around a long time in some form or another, but we
disabled it so we could get to work on our redesign of account creation and
login. Now that's it's finished, we wanted to make it available again.
There's more in the documentation I linked to above, but the general point
is that this gives us a low cost, minimally invasive way to figure out how
many people are coming to sign up via a particular avenue.
Among our first test cases, my team would really like to know if
significant numbers of people are signing up via the links English
Wikipedia puts in system messages directed at those viewing semi-protected
pages and anonymous editors. I've put up a proposal about this on-wiki at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Let.27s_fi…
If you have any questions about how campaigns work and how they might be
applied elsewhere, please speak up. :)
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi everyone,
WMF researchers have agreed to participate in an office hour about WMF research projects and methodologies.
The currently scheduled participants are:
* Aaron Halfaker, Research Analyst (contractor)
* Jonathan Morgan, Research Strategist (contractor)
* Evan Rosen, Data Analytics Manager, Global Development
* Haitham Shammaa, Contribution Research Manager
* Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, Strategy
We'll meet on IRC in #wikimedia-office on April 22 at 1800 UTC. Please join us.
Pine
Hey,
I started a page on Meta to list all currently active EventLogging schemas:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Schemas
I'd like to have a short description for each one, so please help populate
it if you can.
Thanks!
---
Ori Livneh
ori(a)wikimedia.org
I noted in the VPR thread* that adding campaign links to the various
welcome-templates might be a good idea.
Relatedly, I was rambling last night about what links we include in
welcome-templates, over at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Flow_Portal/Welcome_Module#What_content_…
(There are a few good links within there, that should be checked out)
We don't need to go crazy by attempting to clean up the majority (there
are almost 500 welcome-templates...). But it might be good to clean up
the main-directory listing them, and the most-used examples
(particularly the ones twinkle uses**).
Maybe we could/should:
* Make a list of some recommended link-targets to include in any
welcome-template
* Minimize the quantity of links in each template
* and fix-up some of the standard sentences.
I'm also wondering if we want to try to analyze the welcome-templates,
(or the links that we put in them), to the extent of grouping them into
- or creating new ones to target - "demographic-specific" sets? Eg.
Templates that are good for computer-geek-archetypes. Templates written
for technophobe-grandfather / old-tenured-professor archetypes.
Templates for pop-culture-editors who have displayed snarky humor and
are likely to roll their eyes at formalese.
Or by the archetypes named in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Editor_Lifecycles#Model
Thought for food.
Quiddity.
[P.s. First post. Hopefully this works. I usually try to lurk awhile on
mailinglists, but I thought this might be good/relevant content.]
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Let.27s_fi…
** https://github.com/azatoth/twinkle/blob/master/modules/friendlywelcome.js
In case you haven't seen, User:Rillke on Commons has implemented a
(default-on!) gadget that makes it possible to subscribe to
notifications of different types, e.g. policy changes, new features,
etc. These are shown as watchlist banners and upon login.
Here's a screenshot of the "subscription" interface:
http://i.imgur.com/gdImENz.png
IMO that type of gadget lends supports to the notion of shooting for a
subscription model to be ultimately integrated with Echo so that users
can get standard read-once notifications about things they care about
while keeping the core UI clutter-free.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone, and happy Friday!
This is a quick list of highlights from what the Editor Engagement
Experiments team deployed to the wikis yesterday:
*GettingStarted*: the interface change of note is that the toolbar
(presented on articles if you accept a GettingStarted task) is now much
more responsive on smaller screen sizes and print. Since we opted to hide
the toolbar on screen sizes where it would otherwise be broken (i.e. below
about 850px of width), we started explicitly logging whether users saw the
toolbar or not.
*GuidedTours*: logging for guided tours was recently broken by our last
release. This wasn't a big deal since we weren't running any active
controlled tests, but we deployed and verified fixes for logging, along
with cleaning up other parts of the architecture.
*CoreEvents*: CoreEvents is a new extension, deployed just last week, to
house logging of certain events in MediaWiki core, like preference updates.
Yesterday we added logging of whether an edit was made via the API or
mobile. Learn more at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CoreEvents
*EventLogging*: the big change here is that we added an API module for
retrieving the JSON of a schema. Like index.php?action=raw on a wikitext
page, the module returns the raw JSON content of the schema and lets you
refer to a specific revision. Here's an example:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=jsonschema&revid=5588433&format…
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi folks,
Here's a quick update on Article Feedback v5, our reader engagement tool.
1. German Poll
After a six-month pilot, the German Wikipedia community has just started a two-week poll to determine its next steps for Article Feedback. German editors are now voting to decide whether or not to introduce AFT for all their articles -- or only make it available on an opt-in basis, using the new enable/disable tool. If you know people who contribute to the German Wikipedia, please invite them to participate in this poll (1).
2. French Release
After a three-month test, the French Wikipedia community is getting ready to deploy Article Feedback more widely, on 40,000 articles. The plan is to test the tool on this wider sample for another six months, then to deploy it on all articles at the end of the year, unless a new community vote is requested. (2)
3. New Opt-in Tool
As requested by English and German community members, we recently deployed a new Enable/Disable Feedback tool, to make it easier for editors to quickly invite reader feedback for articles they work on -- or to disable that feedback if they no longer need it. You can learn more about this tool on our AFT talk page on the English Wikipedia (3) -- and we encourage you to use it on articles you edit. This was our final feature for this release, and we hope you will find it useful.
4. Metrics Dashboards
We now have updated metrics dashboards for all projects that are using Article Feedback at this time (4). They are helping us track which of our new moderation tools are being used the most by users across different languages: on average, about 12% of moderated feedback is marked as useful, with 4% marked as resolved, 46% as no action required and 17% as inappropriate, as detailed in this spreadsheet (5).
5. Next steps
Once we hear the results from our first pilots, we will consider supporting a second group of projects that wish to use to AFT5 in the second half of 2013, as outlined in our updated release plan (6). If you know of large projects that would be interested in enabling reader feedback on their sites, please invite them to contact us by email to discuss a possible release later this year.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank German editors User:se4598, User:TMg and Denis Barthel (WMDE), as well as French editor Benoît Evellin for all their hard work in introducing Article Feedback to their communities in recent months: we have really enjoyed our collaborations with you, which have made for a much better product. Many thanks as well to developer Mathias Mullie, designer Pau Giner and analyst Dario Taraborelli for going beyond the call of duty to create some of the final features requested by our communities!
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
(1) German Poll
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Artikel-Feedback
(2) French AFT page
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Outil_de_retour_des_lecteurs
(3) Enable/Disable Tool
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Article_Feedback_Tool/Version_5…
(4) Article Feedback Metrics Dashboards:
Feedback Moderation
http://toolserver.org/~dartar/en/fp/http://toolserver.org/~dartar/de/fp/http://toolserver.org/~dartar/fr/fp/
Feedback Volume
http://toolserver.org/~dartar/en/aft5/http://toolserver.org/~dartar/de/aft5/http://toolserver.org/~dartar/fr/aft5/
(5) Article Feedback Stats 2013
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq_75_5y5sKWdD…
(6) Article Feedback 2013 Release Plan
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5/Release_Plan_2013
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Editor Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Donate to keep Wikipedia free:
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
I'm not sure if this is the best place to suggest this, but one thing it'd be great if Echo did: notify you when someone adds a photo you've created to a page on a wiki.
Echo currently notifies you when someone adds a link to a page you've created, so why not an image too? There's obviously a potential issue here with cross-wiki implementation. That is, I create an image and put it on Commons, and someone adds it to English Wikipedia - do I get the notification on Commons or English Wikipedia? As someone active on both, I'd be okay with either, really. But if someone adds it to, say, Farsi Wikinews, do I have to be active on there too in order to see the notification, or would having it so that gets passed to Commons be more useful?
That's an implementation detail. If I were notified every time images I'd created were used on one of the projects, I'm pretty sure that would motivate me to upload more images and make me feel happier about the work put into taking the photos and uploading them. I may also be able to help improve the article in which they are used or correct issues in said article, or thank the person using the image. Building up those relationships between image creators and article editors may lead to a bit less of a 'culture clash' and distrust between them.
--
Tom Morris
http://tommorris.org/
Hi all,
Over the weekend, I was reminded that we don't have accounts watch their
user page and user talk page by default. (I was actually surprised to hear
this, and had to go create a test account to confirm.)
What do people think about this, and maybe changing the default to be the
opposite? Especially with Echo, you get notified if someone leaves you a
message, so maybe it's not a problem. However, it seems like a strange
default to not watch these pages.
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi everyone,
Here's a quick update on our latest developments for Notifications this week.
1. Today's release
Here are some of the revisions we just deployed today on the English Wikipedia and MediaWiki.org:
* A/B test of new user productivity (read more below) (1)
* New metrics: we're now tracking views and clicks for web notifications (2)
* Skin support: Modern and Monobook now work (Cologne is next) (3)
* Thanks confirmation is now required (to prevent accidental clicks) (4)
Please let us know if you have any comments or questions. If you come across any bugs, please report them here, or post them on Bugzilla. (5)
2. A/B Test
Throughout this week, we will be running an A/B test to study the general effects of Notifications on the behavior of new editors on Wikipedia. When someone creates a new account on the English Wikipedia this week, they will be automatically assigned to one of two groups:
* an Echo cohort, which will get the same notifications as new users have been getting in recent weeks
* a pre-Echo cohort, which will only get the old talk page message notifications, without any Echo notifications
During this test, we will use behavioral measurements to determine which users were more active (survival rate, edits, labor hours), productive (revert rate), communicative (talk & user_talk edits) and burdensome (revert rate, block rate). We will stop bucketing new users into the pre-Echo cohort after a week, and that cohort will be switched to Echo notifications after a month, so they're not left out. Read more about this and related tests in our Research:Notifications pages on Meta. (1)
3. Thanks notification
Our Thanks notification seems to have been generally well received by English community: over 4,000 thanks notifications have been sent in the past ten days (6), and they are now as frequent as notifications for page reviews or user mentions, with ~200 unique senders/day, ~300 unique recipients/day (vs. ~40/day for Wikilove). Community members have made many productive suggestions for improving this feature, and many have taken the time to show their appreciation on our talk page (7), which of course is music to our ears. It's great to see ... : )
4. New features
We're now working on these features, which we aim to deploy in coming weeks:
* Flyout links (secondary links to diff pages for talkpage messages) (8)
* HTML Email Notifications (9)
* Mobile notifications (now in beta)
* More metrics dashboards
* 'Suppressed' content feature
* Internationalization updates
* Watchlist preference
5. Next steps
Our follow-up goals for Notifications include:
* Complete core features this month
* Deploy Echo on international projects this summer
* Develop cross-wiki and a few key features this fall
* Support mobile + multimedia teams and third-party developers
Our roadmap for Notifications in 2013 is outlined on our E2 planning page for editor engagement features. (10)
Thanks to Benny, Erik B., Dario, Kaldari, Oliver, Vibha and all our other team members and community partners for making this project possible. We look forward to our next steps together!
Fabrice, on behalf of the Editor Engagement team.
(1) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Notifications/Experiment_1
(2) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Metrics#Views_Dashboard
(3) https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47932
(4) https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47658
(5) https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
(6) http://toolserver.org/~dartar/en/echo/
(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Thanks#I_love_thi….
(8) https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48183
(9) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#HTML_single_email_n…
(10) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Editor_Engagement/2013_strategy_planning_(Fea…
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Editor Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Donate to keep Wikipedia free:
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
