Thanks, @Sdkb, for taking the time to respond, and sorry for the delayed response!
I agree that we already have some existing systems that we should utilize when praising newcomers. In the designs I’ve recently added to the Positive Reinforcement page, you can see we are currently considering ways to integrate Thanks and Wikilove into the newcomer homepage. I’ve added those images in the time since you made your comment. What do you think?
I'd prefer to see functionality that perhaps flags contributions that might be worthy of thanks and makes it more convenient to hand it out.
We are still brainstorming ways to surface praise-worthy edits to mentors or other contributors, but we are thinking along this same line. How do you think we should flag contributions that might be worthy of thanks?
Thanks for bringing up phab:T51087, I can see how that would make the [[Special:Log/thanks]] more useful. For instance, in the design in this mockup, maybe that would allow newcomers to click on “View all thanks (4)” and then see exactly which edits they got thanked for. Is this along the lines of what you were thinking?
Second, one thing I've noticed newcomers are often very eager for is awards to put on their userpage
This is a great point. Current designs include newcomer awards only being visible on the newcomer homepage, but awards and recognition are likely more effective if they can be shared or seen by others. We’ll keep this in mind as we start to refine the “Leveling up” idea. What do you think of an idea where newcomers could “port” awards over to their user pages? Or do you think that should happen automatically?
I definitely encourage improvements to the impact module to be done in a way that scales as editors become more experienced.
I agree that ideally the impact module can be built in a way that is scalable and useful as editors become more experienced, but currently our team is most focused on new editors – the parts of their journey that happen over their first week or two on the wiki. At what point in the lifecycle do you think a newcomer might want to start seeing a more advanced version of the impact module?
Thanks again for all of the valuable feedback! Please let us know if you have any further feedback now that more designs and details have been added to the Positive Reinforcements page.