Hi all,
The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed tomorrow, Wednesday, May 15, at 9:30 AM PST / 16:30 UTC. Find your local time here https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1715790600. The theme for this showcase is *Reader to Editor Pipeline*.
You are welcome to watch via the YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-8CbpcwGV8. As usual, you can join the conversation in the YouTube chat as soon as the showcase goes live.
This month's presentations: Journey TransitionsBy *Mike Raish and Daisy Chen*What kinds of events do readers and editors identify as separating the stages of their relationship with Wikipedia, and which of these kinds of events might the Wikimedia Foundation possibly support through design interventions? In the Journey Transitions qualitative research project, the WMF Design Research team interviewed readers and editors in Arabic, Spanish, and English in order to answer these questions and provide guidance to WMF Product teams making strategic decisions. A series of semi-structured interviews revealed that readers and editors describe their relationships with Wikipedia in different ways, with readers describing a static and transactional relationship, and that even many experienced editors express confusion about core functions of the Wikimedia ecosystem, such as the role of Talk pages. This presentation will describe the Journey Transitions research, as well as present its implications for the sponsoring Product teams in order to shed light on the way that qualitative research is used to inform strategic decisions in the Wikimedia Foundation. Increasing participation in peer production communities with the Growth featuresBy *Morten Warncke-Wang and Kirsten Stoller*For peer production communities to be sustainable, they must attract and retain new contributors. Studies have identified social and technical barriers to entry and discovered some potential solutions, but these solutions have typically focused on a single highly successful community, the English Wikipedia, been tested in isolation, and rarely evaluated through controlled experiments. In this talk, we show how the Wikimedia Foundation’s Growth team collaborates with Wikipedia communities to develop and experiment with new features to improve the newcomer experience in Wikipedia. We report findings from a large-scale controlled experiment using the Newcomer Homepage, a central place where newcomers can learn how peer production works and find opportunities to contribute, and show how the effectiveness depends on the newcomer’s context. Lastly, we show how the Growth team has continued developing features that further improve the newcomer experience while adapting to community needs. Best,Kinneret