I logged into a dormant personal account today and was happy to see the impact of my previously made edits available via the new feature - it is amazing! One feedback - I had difficulty discovering the homepage feature. I had to refer to the docs on MediaWiki.org to figure out how to get to Special: Homepage and take the necessary steps to enable it. It would be a good idea to make the homepage feature easily discoverable for all users.
Topic on Talk:Growth/2023
@Srishti Sethi - Thanks for the feedback about the Homepage!
The Homepage is enabled by default for all newly created accounts, and has been for awhile, but for established accounts I agree that the Homepage is difficult to discover!
I've held off on encouraging advanced editors to enable the Homepage until it boasts a more robust set of features that cater to their needs. Nevertheless, I wonder if the recently introduced Impact module might pique the interest of experienced editors? Are there any other features you'd like to suggest for inclusion on the Homepage?
Do you have any thoughts on how we should make the Homepage more easily discoverable for established accounts?
@Srishti Sethi and @KStoller-WMF, thank you throwing a small stone into the pond, and I am one of the old bones who enjoys the feature time to time: it presents me topics that I have never read before, and everytime I am thrilled to find there are white maps for me but explored by Wikimedians.
Would be nice for a translate bee like me, to be nudged to red-link pages that has article(s) in other language than my local one: it might be handy with features like:
- analysing which area I have worked on translation in the past,
- an indicator for word counts/number of categories
- language pair default to choose from, and
- the matching portal on local wikis.
Cheers,
@Omotecho thanks for the feedback! It's so great to hear that you find the homepage useful! The Growth team has discussed ways to better integrate translation tasks into the Homepage or Suggested edits. We started a project page to start documenting ideas and research, but the project hasn't yet been prioritized: Growth/Translation task for homepage.
I've just added your idea to that project page so we can be sure to consider these ideas once we can move that project forward. Thanks! :)
Do you have any thoughts on how we should make the Homepage more easily discoverable for established accounts?
Couldn’t you just enable Display newcomer homepage for everyone (but keep Default to newcomer homepage from username link in personal tools disabled by default)? I think the extra tab on the user page isn’t too annoying for people who don’t want to use it but easily discoverable for those who do want to give it a try.
If it’s too resource-intensive to compute data for people who will never use it, you could just display the tab for everyone (or display it if another, opt-out preference is enabled), and keep the actual homepage feature opt-in for senior editors. Maybe also replace the current link to preferences on Special:Homepage with a button to enable the homepage without navigating away.
@Tacsipacsi Thanks for the response! I think you not only suggested some good solutions, but also clearly acknowledged the constraints that are top of my mind:
• The Growth team is hesitant to make any major UI / menu changes for experienced editors without community approval. But perhaps the extra tab on the user page is unobtrusive enough that it wouldn't cause frustration for experienced editors? Or perhaps we could add a setting to Community Configuration (Special:EditGrowthConfig) so that admins can make the final decision about how the Homepage is surfaced to experienced editors.
• There is some hesitation to compute the Impact module data for ALL accounts when the homepage might be ignored by most experienced account holders. But I think your idea to simply make the opt in easier when visiting Special:Homepage could be a great compromise!
I'll chat with the Growth team further about these ideas for making the Homepage more discoverable. I'm not sure when we can fit in this work, but if nothing else I will document some initial ideas in Phabricator. Thanks!
I've chatted with some Growth team members about the feedback in this thread today and added this task:
Homepage access for all account holders T350837
It doesn't solve the discoverability issue, but I think it's a step in the right direction. That being said, I need to chat with engineers about the feasibility of requirements, and I'm still unsure if/when we could fit in the work... so I can't make any promises that it will be completed. But feel free to leave feedback about the task in Phabricator or here. Thanks!
@KStoller-WMF, thank you indeed to keep us in the circle. And great to feel the missing link will be bridged someday, to encourage web natives to the world of Wikimedia.
BTW, do you think the "Let's Connect" people are informed of this project? They are sharing group, and resources are explained/trained camped by for the local coordinators. Yes, the very consumers of the HomePage as well as those gentle nudges to walk out of shadow and start your first editing. (: Cheers, --
@OmotechoThanks for the suggestion! At least some of the Let's Connect organizers are aware of Growth features, as they asked me to present at a Let's Connect session earlier this year. I shared a presentation about Newcomer tools for campaign participants.
But I think there is likely more that the Growth team could do to partner with Let's Connect, so that local coordinators know about the newcomer Homepage, Mentorship, Suggested edits, etc. @Trizek (WMF) and I discussed and will consider this approach as we think more about spreading awareness of Growth features.
Thank you picking up my thoughts, and to supplement the climate of newly participated old bones like from Japan; users are a bit over fed with newsletters: The bus terminal is too packed, and ppl don’t find if they are picking the right bus.
It worsened to the extent that AFAIK those repeated mumbles of frustration had even teared the Announcement pages on jawp into two different pages: foreign tray (WMF issued) and domestic tray (any_project/ja issued). Naturally, domestic delivery is more reader friendly as they know their palms, regardless of your wiki life history/months staying.
We translators owe part of it since FY2022, being flooded with energetic inclusiveness endeavors at Foundation teams, aka almost tripled volume of issues as more teams releasing variable letters of news items. Some of them go overdue/shelf rot before they are put onto mother tongues.
A nickel for thoughts. How about putting up a very crisp eye catching message and link to universal news page, an option subscribers can choose from? As Growth team covers very dynamic levels a d structured info/data, I imagine users sometimes give up to read or comprehend feeling the door us too tall/heavy to pull open.
Well, I am not sure if a bulletin board will be placed somewhere, maybe local, maybe cross-Wikimedia/per project, like hotel concierge desk. All the headlines. Or for the time being to get consent, Growth will gain a lot adopting a similar format to Edu-wiki newsletter. In fact, fewer translation on each topic, that readers need to self serve and do some off-wiki machine translation, if the topic triggers them to invest.
FYI, I remember those announcements I scanned at supermarket coupon fountains way back before cellular phones: you stop and scan when you have time. Or old fashioned flyers at bus stops that you tear off a piece of contact info at the bottom, which the poster had made into narrow slips with same data.
Kindly make a workable cross point of infos that will meet the eligible participants to the level of training/meetups/peers. Cheers,
Interesting! I don't think the Growth team has considered a separate universal news page, but I love the idea of having more modules available on the homepage, including some sort of "news" or "events" module. We've discussed this sort of option in the past: T230475, and I know we'll be considering it again in the future as we hope to partner more with the Campaigns team.
I would love to develop more modules for the Homepage (T229865) and then allow editors to customize which modules they see (as every editor has unique interests and tasks that they want surfaced on their homepage).
That being said, we don't have this work planned out yet, and our next project will likely be influenced by the high-level WMF strategic plan, so I'm not sure if this work will be prioritized, but I hope we can fit it in eventually!