Topic on Talk:Growth/Mentor dashboard/2023

I read this project is geared more towards mid-sized Wikipedias but wanted to share a thought from an ENWP editor, if useful

What's most exciting to me about a dashboard is less the dedicated space for managing these interactions but the potential to build it into the existing interface. Like most compelling for me is:

• I mainly want to see my specified editor/mentee's edits, particularly if highlighted in my regular watchlist in context of other things I'm watching (i.e., not having to check another surface)
  • I particularly want to see high impact edits from my mentees so I can (1) encourage and (2) offer process improvements (i.e., using X template might help)
• I want to receive a system-wide notification (in the top bar) if my mentee needs help with something and doesn't know how to use the {{ping}} template
• I do not need to see or maintain a list of dedicated mentees or track them like a leaderboard, except to remove them from my notifications/watchlist (such a list would be depressing as I'd wager most editors won't come back beyond asking one or two questions)
• I do not need awards—seeing the mentee create content and make impact is the loop and the reward
• Somewhat out of scope, but as a mentor, I want WMF data to recommend my most valuable actions as a mentor: "Newcomers who receive X from an experienced user have the highest likelihood of returning"—tell me (either by notification or talk page message or email or whatever) what message to send and to whom and you need not build an interface to facilitate it

Hope that can be useful. If/when this extends to larger Wikipedias, I see most of the benefit coming from small tweaks to the existing interface that integrate into my regular editing

Hi @Czar -- thank you for leaving these notes here (and in the link you included to the other conversation), and I apologize for my belated reply. This is really valuable stuff -- I think the most important insight is about seeing new information in the same feeds that you already check, instead of having to go to a new interface. That's a perennial design challenge that has come up for features in the past -- it's why, for instance, we have our existing mentorship model send questions to the mentor's talk page instead of asking them to check some new place for the questions. Thanks for the reminder for the case of this dashboard.

For what it's worth, we have heard from mentors in multiple communities about the need for a way to "see who my mentees are". I think your ideas for how this can be lightweight might help us get to something good sooner, once we start work on it. We'll revisit these notes then.