User talk:Zoeannl

Archives: 2015 2018

John Ruskin

@Yann: I am starting proofreading some of Ruskin's books. I found a volume of "Fors Clavigera" that you uploaded. Do you think you could upload the whole set, please? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 02:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

I don’t remember why I didn’t upload the rest. May be they weren’t available, or… As usual, IA is a mess. There is no indication in the description about which volume it is, and where are the other ones. :( And then this probably needs renaming. I found 16 volumes (0 to 15), but there are duplicates. If you could look at it, and tell me which files are needed, it would be great. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:03, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

vol 1&2 and vol 3&4 says "complete in 4 volumes" but doesn't have a date of publishing. vol 1&2 and vol 3&4, published 1886 seems identical. I'd go with the latter two books. What do you think @Yann:? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

"complete in 4 volumes" ? But [1] is volume 7… It doesn’t make sense. We need to find a complete set before uploading anything. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

The copy you have found is an English publisher who published the letters in at least 12 volumes. The U.S. publishers published all of the letters in 4 volumes. I did a quick look through to compare and found no difference between the English and U.S. publications. There doesn't seem to be a complete set of the English volumes on IA so I think this is the best we can do. Better than not having any edition at all. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:02, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 7

Thank you for all the validation work on the OHQ! Gave me a smile to start my day. -Pete (talk) 18:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Hi Pete, I've been enjoying reading OHQ, and proofreading as I go along, but must admit these tables are hard work. Appendix G was particularly horrible, could you do the transclusion so I can see if I've made a mash up of it? It will boost my fortitude to tackle the rest. Cheers, Zoe Zoeannl (talk) 03:22, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm happy to help out, and a little embarrassed to see the state I had left them in -- I thought I had put the appendix material in a more readable format than I did. Do you mean Document G in the appendix? I don't see much wrong with it, you've done a really good job; the only thing I can see (and without a little research, I don't know how to fix it) is the extra dots on the "total" lines (and the lines immediately above). I can read up on the relevant templates. Anything else you want me to dig into? I'm happy to work on the remaining un-validated pages, but have been cautious about stepping on your toes! -Pete (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I wanted to let you know. I have tried several times to figure out how {{TOCstyle}} works, and I am just stumped. Maybe if I really put my mind to it I could learn it, but the time I've put into it thus far seems like it's for nothing. I am thinking I will just work the data into simpler HTML/wiki tables, which might not mimic the original format as precisely, but will I think at least permit the reader to get the information in the articles. Again, thank you for your help, and I'm sorry I couldn't reciprocate in the way you requested. -Pete (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

The author of TOCstyle and I had a long conversation on my talk page that led to its present (incomplete) state. It's archived if you want to have a look. My own notes are a bit obtuse but are on my Proofreader's guide. Unfortunately, during my last hiatus, he seems to have had a blow-up with the mods and disappeared. I have asked for help on a couple of occasions on Scriptorium and there seem to be a few who understand how it works, but no joy getting anything major fixed. I am trying to come up with a resource to encourage proofreaders to work at WS. Tables are a turn off. Usually TOCstyle has very satisfying results... Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:47, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

P.S I am a bit stretched atm but do intend to get back to the tables when my stamina is on the ascendant again.

Thank you, your proofreader's guide looks quite useful. I'll take a look, and maybe see if I can redouble my efforts on the TOC style template. I suspect I'll learn some other tricks I've missed out on, as well -- thanks for sharing it.

I wonder if you could expand on your statement that tables are a turn off. Do you mean tables as a general concept (i.e., text grouped in shapes to convey meaning) or are you referring to the HTML table tag? Is your primary concern for proofreaders or readers? Is it the consistency of the display across web browsers? the flexibility of the format for future reuse? Maybe it would be useful to put some commentary on this topic in your guide as well?

In this case (and in many cases where I encounter tables and charts in original texts), my primary motivation is to complete the encompassing text. In that context, I'd like to present the contents of the tables in a way that is accurate, and where the text is searchable (which rules out simply uploading image files). More precision than that is not my main motivation. But, to the extent there are tools that will let me do a better job, I'd like to learn them.

For now, I'm just working on other volumes (Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 3 is getting close!) but I hope to get enough of a handle on the relevant templates to return to Vol. 7 soon. -Pete (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #5

Welcome to the fifth newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

New projects for discussion

We began the "Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".

• Engagement emails: this project was first discussed positively by community members here back in September 2018, and the team how has bandwidth to pursue it. The idea is that newcomers who leave the wiki don't get encouraged to return to the wiki and edit. We can engage them through emails that send them the specific information they need to be successful – such as contact from a mentor, the impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
• Newcomer homepage: we developed the idea for this project after analyzing the data from the welcome survey and EditorJourney datasets. We saw that many newcomers seem to be looking for a place to get started – a place that collects their past work, options for future work, and ways to learn more. We can build this place, and it can connect to the engagement emails. The content of both could be guided by what newcomers say they need during their welcome survey, and contain things like contact from a mentor, impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?

Initial reports on newcomer activity

We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.

• Welcome survey: the initial report on welcome survey responses is available here. Some of the main findings:
  • Most users respond to the survey, giving it high response rates of 67% and 62% in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, respectively.
  • The survey does not cause newcomers to be less likely to edit.
  • The most common reason for creating an account in Korean Wikipedia is to read articles—not for editing—with 29% of Korean users giving that responses.
  • Large numbers of respondents said they are interested in being contacted to get help with editing: 36% in Czech and 53% in Korean.
• Understanding first day: the initial report on what newcomers do on their first day is available here. Some of the main findings:
  • Large numbers of users view help or policy pages on their first day: 42% in Czech and 28% in Korean.
  • Large numbers of users view their own User or User Talk page on their first day: 34% in Czech and 39% in Korean.
  • A majority of new users open an editor on their first day – but about a quarter of them do not go on to save an edit during that time.

Help panel deployment

The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:

• About 400 newcomers in each wiki have seen the help panel button.
• About 20% of them open up the help panel.
• About 50% of those who open it up click on one of the links.
• About 5% of Czech users ask questions, and about 1% of Korean users ask questions.

We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.

How to create a good feedback page?

What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Pentagon Papers

A bunch of the index pages still need to be properly set up as well with the scans possibly fixed. Is there a particular section that interests you? MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:38, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman: I tend to just start at the beginning and work through. Unless there are a lot of tables to slog through, that I might put aside for when I'm up to the challenge. I am interested in the different style of proofreading, is this continuing as Guerillawarfare set it up or has it been superseded? Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 07:46, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Roughly as she did... I mostly finished up the sections she did but lately have been working my way through the primary source scans (e.g. Index:Pentagon-Papers-Part-V-B-3d.djvu) to be able to link to them from the narrative text. These often have tables / formatting etc. The next unstarted section in the narrative is already set up here: Index:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. B. 3.djvu. MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:01, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Let me know if you have any questions. I can take a look at linking the indices back to the main page next week MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:06, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #6

Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Plans for the next three months

The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:

• Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
• Continued iteration on help panel
• Make the help panel available to more wikis
• Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
• Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
• Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers

Newcomer homepage

Mockup of potential design for newcomer homepage

The newcomer homepage is our current major project. We hope that community members can read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. You can see in the accompanying mockup how we are thinking about the homepage.

We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:

• Shown in the User space
• Desktop only (mobile comes next)
• Four modules
  • Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
  • Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
  • Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
  • Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
• Layout not yet personalized for each user

We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.

Help panel

Screenshot from Vietnamese Wikipedia showing the help panel open on the Community Portal, including the "search" bar.

During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:

• 2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
• 422 of them have opened it
• 175 have clicked links
• 27 have run searches
• 40 have asked questions

We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.

Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.

• We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
• The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.

We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Philosophical Review

Thank you for noticing my work on the Philosophical Review. I had just finished a 19-volume work, and was searching for another, when I found the Review. I have enjoyed working on it.

I have never liked the look of no spaces around dashes, so I have never followed that rule. However, since you started the work on the Review, I will yield to your expertise, and have stopped work on the Review. You will need to check every page I have completed, as there are a lot of extra spaces you will not like.

Cheers.

Susanarb (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #7

Welcome to the seventh newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Newcomer homepage release this week

Screenshot of newcomer homepage in Test Wikipedia, in English.

The main feature that the team has been working on over the last month is the newcomer homepage. This feature gives newcomers a place on the wiki to get oriented, learn about editing, and see their impact (see the accompanying screenshot from Test Wikipedia). We intend to release this feature to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias on May 2nd.

Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.

Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:

• Additional questions will come to the help desk from the "help module" on the homepage.
• Mentors who have signed up for the "mentorship module" will start to receive questions on their user talk pages.
• More users may create and edit user pages through the "start module".

Mockups for potential designs of mobile homepage

Recent and future homepage development

The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:

• Mobile design: to work well in mobile browsers, the homepage needs a separate design and engineering. See the accompanying mockups for potential mobile designs.
• Features for discovery: only about 15% - 30% of newcomers will discover their homepage by clicking their username at the top of their browser. We are going to be designing additional ways for newcomers to find out about it.
• Additional modules: the initial version contains some of the simpler modules. Potential upcoming modules include task recommendations and a feed of activity on the wiki.

Other updates

• Help panel leading indicators: our team published data on the help panel's initial performance. The evaluation exposes some areas for improvement, but we think the help panel's behavior so far is healthy and that it is not having a negative impact on the wikis. We will be publishing additional data, making plans, and asking for community thoughts around the future of the help panel over the course of the next two weeks. If you are interested in trying out the help panel on your wiki, please let us know on our team's talk page.
• Long term plans: the team had a week of planning meetings, in which we talked about some longer-term ideas for Growth work. Some of the top ideas are: to extend the newcomer homepage to help user's build their identity through a user profile, and to revisit the "engagement emails" project that the team put on hold. Over the next month, we will be asking for community conversation around how the team can spend our time in the next fiscal year, that starts in July.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:19, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019

Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.

Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.

---

Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.

Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.

In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:

• What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
• How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
• How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?

Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.

Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.

Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!

More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.

Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.

If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.

On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #8

Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.

General news

• The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
• Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.

Early results from newcomer homepage release

A newcomer homepage on Czech Wikipedia (displayed in English language)

• The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
• After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
  • About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
  • About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
  • Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
  • Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.

Next steps for homepage

Mockup of mobile newcomer homepage

• Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
  • Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
  • Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
• User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.

Future of team in the next year

• The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
• Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
• Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
  • Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
  • Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
  • Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
  • Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
• We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Quotes at Index:Sin and Crime.pdf

I started validating some of the pages on this work but noticed that there were curly quotes in the proofread text. I used TemplateScript to clear the linebreaks after I checked the proofreading, but TS also automatically converts curly quotes to typewriter quotes per the current guideline. There's an ongoing discussion about allowing the use of curly quotes so I'm not sure if you'd prefer them to be kept in? —Nizolan (talk) 20:09, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Nizolan: The OCR had curly quotes so I didn't bother to convert. It seems to be an issue of compatibility with computer fonts? I'm fine with the bot conversions. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:29, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I finished validating and put it up on the main page new texts list. Interesting little pamphlet. —Nizolan (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #9

Welcome to the ninth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Opening Growth features to more wikis

The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.

Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:

• Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
• Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
• EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.

General news

Indicator that encourages users to look at their Notifications for responses to their questions

• A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
  • Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
  • Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
  • Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
• Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
• We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language. This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.

Mobile homepage and early analysis

Button to help newcomers find their homepage from their empty Contributions page

• The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
• We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
• Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
• As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Zoeannl,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wikisource and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 14:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Zoeannl,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 19:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #10

Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

• Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
• You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!

Growth at Wikimania

Opening panel in the Community Growth space

• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
• Here are the most important links:
  • Notes and learnings from Wikimania
  • Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
  • Slides from Growth team presentation
• These are some of our topline notes:
  • Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
  • Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
  • Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!

Mockup of newcomer tasks

• The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
• We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
• These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
  • Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
  • How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
  • How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
• We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
• You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Zoeannl,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 17:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #11

Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

• Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
• The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!

Help panel results

Mockup of guidance while doing a suggested edit, using the help panel

The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).

• In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
• This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
• We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
• We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.

Newcomer tasks deployment

Mockup of topic matching in newcomer tasks

• The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
• We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
• These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
  • V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
  • V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
• The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #12

Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

• A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
• Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks

We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.

Suggested edits by type of edit.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits

• About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
• When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
  • 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
  • 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
• Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
• Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed

The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".

• On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
• In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks

Prototype of how the help panel will "peek" from the bottom of the page to offer guidance on mobile.

Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.

• Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
• Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
• Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Index:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu

Hi. I see that you did some of the early work on this index. I also see that the proofreading (first round) is complete, and much of the work is not transcluded. I am wondering whether you are able to spend some time to transclude the remainder of the work. Thanks if you can. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Is there a way to tell which pages I didn't proofread? I'm happy to transclude what I can though I am technologically disabled atm having broken my computer a few months back. My son has promised his old one when he has finished getting his new one going so am looking forward to doing more proofreading soon. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 01:32, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Bad news about the computer. I was mentioning the transcluding to main namespace which needed doing, rather than the proofreading. That said, we have a gadget in preferences Pages I can validate... in the Pages section that will show highlight proofread pages that you didn't progress to that stage. If you cannot, it is not an issue, I know that some enjoy transcluding works where they have proofread, so was mentioning that. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:32, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Transcription links

Please do not add transcription links for works that have been fully transcribed. These links are meant to be temporary and should be removed once a work has been transcribed. Once a work has been transcribed, that link should be removed from the author page, or other general Wikisource pages where it was listed. You can always create a list of links in your own User space, or on a Project page if they are helpful. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:41, 9 February 2020 (UTC) @EncycloPetey: I add links to works that have no Index page e.g. have been copied from Project Gutenberg, so they can be proofread against a scan. Is this not helpful? Zoeannl (talk) 08:45, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

See The Age of Innocence, which is not a Gutenberg copy. This book had an Index page and has been fully proofread. Adding an external link beside that work is likely to result in duplicated and unnecessary work. We have a scan-backed copy from an Index page. The same is true of The Marne and Glimpses of the Moon; both novels have an Index page where all the pages have been proofread. Likewise all of her listed novellas have been proofread from scans, but you added external links to those as well. A Motor-Flight Through France was part of a PotM a couple of years ago, and has been done, and The Book of the Homeless is complete except for the musical notation on four pages. Adding external links or Index pages to works that have already been completely proofread from a scan is counter-productive, so please don't spam external links on Author pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

"Spam" seems like a pretty harsh word for this activity. I read through this to check against my own practices. While I agree with the underlying point EP is making, I appreciate the effort to provide useful info to the reader. Edith Wharton was one of my favorite authors as a kid. Nice to see people making her work more available. -Pete (talk) 14:12, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Plans to transclude?

Hi. I see that you completed Index:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu Are you planning to transclude it to the main ns? Or is that a task from someone else? (not wanting to step on toes) — billinghurst sDrewth 02:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• I’m not really up to anything other than proofreading atm. I’m working 66 hrs/week essential and proofreading is a rare break. Please feel free to pass it on to anyone interested. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 04:40, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Saw your summary...

"(‎Not proofread: table to do)" and wanted to show that simple tables can have simple (shorter?) solutions. Please check Page:Education of the Negro.djvu/15 for avoiding 'tables' while doing short tables. :-) I possible overuse {{Dotted TOC line}}, but most any use of other templates feels like overuse. Shenme (talk) 03:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #13

Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Join the conversation: structured tasks

Sketch of an idea for a structured workflow for adding links to an article. The goal is to help newcomers edit at high volume.

We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.

In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.

Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.

In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.

Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.

Expanding to more wikis

We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.

In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.

We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.

Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!

Other updates

39 topics are now available for newcomer tasks

Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.

• In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
• In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test. See the full results here.
• We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
• Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.

As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Transclusion

So I want a guide to Transclusion for Proofreaders. For people who know how to proofread but are absolute beginners at wiki. They should have done some proofreading on WS and be familiar with using templates. I would expect that the namespace and pagespace are concepts they are coming to terms with and doing transclusions would be a good way to get confident and familiar with the structure of Wikisource books.

What is transclusion?

"Transclusion" is the way we get text from the Page namespace to the main namespace. The Page namespace is where text is meant to be proofread. The main namespace is where text is meant to be read.

Transclusion copies the text across whenever anyone wants to read the page in the main namespace. It is still linked to the Page namespace. So any changes made to the text in the Page namespace will be seen in main namespace as well.

When to transclude

The preferred time to transclude text to the main namespace is after all of the pages have been validated (green page status) and the proofreading is all done.

Sometimes it can help with the proofreading if you can see what the final version will look like in the main namespace. If so, you can transclude pages to the main namespace before the proofreading is all done. As the main namespace is the one we want people to read, we would like it to look as neat and tidy as possible. So please try to only transclude text that is in as good a condition as possible.

• From: Help:Beginner's guide to transclusion

Simple transclusion

Single author, simple title, short front matter

• 1. Go to the Index page of the book you want to transclude.
• 2. There should be a red link for the title. Right click this. Go to the base page [[Title]].

If it is not red—create the link by editing the Index page, contact the project manager from the Discussion page, or ask for Help. There are Naming conventions to consider.

• 3. Click to load the header template to the base page. Add {{smallrefs}} at the bottom of the page.
• 4. The title, year and author parts need to be filled in. Open the Index page in Edit and copy.
• 5. The beginning of the book, including the title page is called the Front Matter. Make the link to the next section (|next=[[/Chapter 1|Chapter 1]]). Transclude (see below) the front matter pages on to the base page [[Title]]; copy the file name from the index page–Index:file name.djvu; determine the first and last pages of the front matter of the book from the Index page.
• 6. Preview and check all of the front matter pages are present and correct. Right click next section, Chapter 1, on the preview. Copy the header template from Front matter and paste on to the Chapter 1 section. Publish page (the Front matter section)
• 7. Fill in the Chapter 1 section. Edit the copied template: section=Chapter 1; |previous=[[Title|Front matter]]; |next=[[../Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] (note addition of ../)
• 8. The Title of this section comes from the book. See Wikisource:Style_guide#Page_titles. So section=Chapter 1 or the chapter title from the book (which you can copy from the preview). Transclude this section. Preview. Check. Right click next section. Copy this section header template. Publish page.
• 9. Paste and fill in next section. This gets really easy when you are moving through the chapters: Add to the chapter number for previous=, and next=. Preview. Copy chapter title. Right click next chapter. Paste chapter title. Copy header template. Publish page. Go to next section.
• 10. At the end of the book, you may have an [[../Index|Index]]
• 11 You don’t have to transclude [[../Advertisements|Advertisements]] at the end of the book.

Transclusion displays the contents found on another page without having to copy-paste nor synchronize any later changes. It is most commonly used to group text into logical and reasonably sized chunks—most frequently as chapters or sections. Examine the transcluded text at The Wind in the Willows (1913)/Chapter 1 and compare with some of the source text found at Page:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu/19. As the individual pages from Index:Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu were saved in the "Page:" namespace, they populated into the chapters of the book through transclusion. Creating readable sections from scanned pages is the most common use of transclusion on Wikisource.

How to transclude full pages

From the book, note the first and last page of the chapter/section. These pages are listed for inclusion in the section below the header template.

The syntax for <pages/> is as follows:

<pages index="file name.djvu" from=x to=y/>

• "file name.djvu" is replaced with the exact name of the Index you are working with.
• The number after the slash (/) following the file name of the first page you wish to transclude is "x".
• The number after the slash (/) following the file name of the final page you wish to transclude is "y".

Example

To display what is transcluded at The Wind in the Willows (1913)/Chapter 5 you would type:

<pages index="Wind in the Willows (1913).djvu" from=133 to=161 />

• Help:Transclusion
• Template:Header for more complicated books

• Preceding/foundation help pages: Help:Namespaces,

Help:Contents

We sent you an e-mail

Hello Zoeannl,

Really sorry for the inconvenience. This is a gentle note to request that you check your email. We sent you a message titled "The Community Insights survey is coming!". If you have questions, email surveys@wikimedia.org.

You can see my explanation here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:48, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #15

Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Variants C and D deployed

Variant D in Portuguese Wikipedia

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.

Structured tasks: add a link

Concept A for add a link.

As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.

Learn more about the findings.

Community news

• We recently deployed the Growth features to Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish Wikipedias. 18 wikis now have Growth features. Learn more about getting the features.
• Have you recently checked if all interface messages are translated for your language?

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16

Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Growth features show impact

Newcomer task experiments results

The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.

In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.

This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:

• the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
• the probability that they are retained as editors
• the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.

• 

  The number of suggested edits completed by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020, with a line for the total.

• 

  The number of distinct users completing suggested edits by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020.

Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.

You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page

General metrics

As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:

• more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
• more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
• more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.

News for mentors

Mentors are volunteers ready to help newcomers in their first steps. Newcomers can contact them using the mentorship module on their homepage.

A separate list for workshops hosts

During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.

Claiming multiple mentees at once

Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news

The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikibooks hosting annotated Wikisource books

Hi @JimKillock: Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away. So, I proofread and I have no idea what you did but Economic Sophisms looks much better with formatting. Thank you. May I ask why you use the narrow columns? I would prefer the wider format as more readable.

I have a number of WS books I have proofread that I would like to annotate on WB so I’m looking forward to your ebook export! Are you planning to export the book from WS or somehow link to the WS pagespace and have a transcluded book on WB? In terms of annotation the first would be preferred as it would be stable; though as a proofreader I would rather the latter (which I had deemed not possible). On consideration I have settled on this preference: to transfer fully validated books as a stable version for annotation but to have a way to notify changes in the original WS version to see if the WB version needs updating-I would presume these would be small proofreading errors where the original text had not been faithfully transcribed and would not include formatting or typographical changes.

It would be nice if there was a link to the original WS pagespace on the WB page, as there is on the transcluded WS page. As a proofreader I feel this is a major strength of WS-to be able to see the original page image source.

Do you have any preferences/ideas on how to create annotated wikibooks? I have seen annotations as footnotes; linked as per references; The_Grand_Inquisitor seems to be an attempt at side-by-side text and annotation which looks promising and is appealing; The_Poetry_of_Gaius_Valerius_Catullus is interesting, I wonder if the annotations and links to WS could be added to the tables; Biblical studies are comprehensive collations of annotations and perhaps something to aim for-could the discussion page be a place for individual contributions and consensus?

The WB William Shakespeare's Works is very sad, it shows a lot of confusion about the connection to WS which supports the plan to export the WS books to WB for annotation; it proposes individual commentary as per a discussion page which seems a good idea to try as it allows individual contributions and discussion. Here is a book of commentary on WS that could be used as the basis of discussion but would be best with the commentary side-by-side, I think, rather than linking to a separate page of commentary.

I personally would love to provide a platform for collaborative discussion and crowd-sourcing material which supports better understanding of literature. It has very exciting possibilities!

It would be good to set up exemplars of possible approaches so people could try out what might work best for them/for the work they are interested in.

Finally, re Wikibook policy It’s a bit vague but it suggests that the WB books should have some level of "significant" annotation; WS policy is that WS books that are wikified (i.e. have WP, Wict, WQ etc links) are not suitable for WS, therefore should live at WB. Is it possible to use a bot to wikify a book so it immediately becomes annotated "significantly" and isn’t a candidate for deletion?

I hope this doesn’t scare you off. I feel better putting my thoughts down in print and would be very happy for any feedback. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 09:48, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi there, and sorry for the brief reply:

Annotated copies is not something I am aiming at or thinking about, but I am happy to help a bit where that is useful, as we have the shared aim (I think) of easy export of ebooks from Wikibooks, and retaining Wikisource features on Wikibooks so migration for you, and ebook export for me, is easy.

Here are two books I have been working on:

• wikibooks:Jánua Linguárum Reseráta (this is a modernised version of an old Latin learners text)
• wikibooks:la:Musica Classica (this is lyrics to famous classical pieces in Latin)

On narrow columns, the reason is readability. This is why newspapers use narrow columns for instance, and why books are tall rather than wide. It is harder when you read to know where the start of the next sentence is on a wide text area than a smaller width. For long text a balance is needed, however, as moving to the next line is also tiring on the eyes.

Wikipedia's default width is very wide, and not IMO good for long texts. it works on Wikipedia etc because it is usually frequently broken up. Not so much for trancribed books IMO.

Re Wikibook policy I am sure that the question is fine so long as you are doing work on it. Nobody will mind so long as that is taking place. As for bots, that's a bit hard to imagine it doing siginficiant annotation work as surely annotation requires human context, unless you already know the values you are trying to insert. JimKillock (talk) 11:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@JimKillock: b:Jánua Linguárum Reseráta looks really nice. What text is it sourced from? I would happy to proofread it on WS (I did Latin at school). Would you like me to proofread Latin for beginners (1911)?

Can we have links to corresponding WS pagespaces on the WB page. I think the header template does it automatically on WS? I’m glad you think this is easy, I don’t want to be a pain but YES I would like WS features on WB books. Cheers, Zoeannl (talk) 23:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17

Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.

Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features

Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.

We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.

We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.

Variant testing

As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.

News for mentors

Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.

Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.

Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)