Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features

Quit mentorship but still receiving questions

I quit my mentorship on December 10th, but for some reason I am still receiving mentorship questions [1], [2], [3]. ––FormalDude (talk) 21:18, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

According to this, you are still assigned a number of mentees. May be related to phab:T330071; maybe see also phab:T351464? Pppery probably knows. Folly Mox (talk) 22:34, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

No idea what caused this, but rejoining and quitting again may help. When the WMF gets around to finishing phab:T330071 any lingering mentor assignments will be cleared, and phab:T351464 from November is not likely to be relevant.

Whatever bug caused this looks inconsistently reproducible, since other mentors have quit later than you and had their mentees properly reassigned. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:58, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I just tried rejoining and quitting again. ––FormalDude (talk) 00:15, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to have worked. What should happen is that resigning generates log entries akin to Special:Log/growthexperiments/Stewpot. No idea why it didn't happen for you. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:23, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I tried removing you via Special:ManageMentors, but that didn't seem to do anything either. You apparently have somewhere north of 30,000 mentees, so if I had to guess I'd say the system just doesn't like processing requests that large. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:51, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah, darn. Sounds like I just need to wait out phab:T330071 then, right? ––FormalDude (talk) 19:29, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@FormalDude Sorry to hear about this issue! Extraordinary Writ's hypothesis sounds quite plausible. I've pinged an engineer on T330071, so hopefully we can determine if it's the same issue or something unrelated.

Thanks for being a mentor previously, and sorry to hear you were receiving so many questions unrelated to editing. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for further improvements we should consider for the Mentorship tools or improvements to new editor onboarding to limit the number of basic / repetitive questions Mentors end of fielding. Thanks, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:21, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@FormalDude A Growth team engineer investigated and unfortunately it appears there is a bug in the reassignment system. Indeed, it seems to relate to having so many mentees that the job to reassign mentees doesn't finish in the allotted time. We've logged a task to fix the issue here: ReassignMenteesJob is not able to finish in time when a mentor has too many mentees assigned (T354222).

And we are working on a one-off fix for reassigning your mentees (T354220) so that you don't need to wait until the underlying bug is fixed to officially step away from Mentorship.

Thanks for reporting the issue, and for all the time you spent helping mentor newer editors! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:05, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @KStoller-WMF! My only feedback would maybe be to make it more clear that mentors are for help with editing Wikipedia. It looks like mentees see a button that says "Ask your mentor a question", perhaps this could be changed to "Ask your mentor a question about editing". It may also be helpful to specify in the prompt that mentors can only help with questions about Wikipedia editing, and possibly give an example in the placeholder text. ––FormalDude (talk) 23:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd support that change – I've run into this issue some as well. Perfect4th (talk) 04:03, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I get not-about-wikipedia questions fairly often but I'm not sure anything will discourage them, since someone confused enough to think I work for Canada Border Services Agency or whatever is also pretty unlikely to understand anything telling them they're in the wrong place. -- asilvering (talk) 07:13, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the button text by editing MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-homepage-mentorship-question-button. If anyone has any specific wording suggestions for the placeholder and prompt I would be willing to implement them. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I would recommend adding another sentence to the end of the prompt that says something like Your mentor is only able to answer questions about Wikipedia editing. For the placeholder text, you could keep the current wording and add an example, so: Say hello and ask your question. E.g. How do I create a citation? ––FormalDude (talk) 05:11, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally, with the first modification in place, I don't think it's necessary to add another sentence saying that an English Wikipedia mentor is only able to answer questions about Wikipedia editing. It starts to feel like talking down to the editor in question. isaacl (talk) 06:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think basic instructions constitute talking down to someone. There doesn't appear to be a ton of guidance to mentees on what mentors are actually for, so I really don't think adding some would hurt. Also, have you ever participated as a mentor? ––FormalDude (talk) 10:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with asilvering that someone who is asking non Wikipedia-related questions to their English Wikipedia mentor, and isn't following the prompt to "Ask your mentor about editing" isn't likely to be dissuaded by a sentence saying that the mentor is only able to answer questions about Wikipedia editing. isaacl (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The added guidance may not dissuade the majority of people who ask off-topic questions, but if it can prevent even a few people, it is worthwhile. ––FormalDude (talk) 07:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd agree with this too: banner blindness and related phenomena mean that a person is more likely to ignore text the longer it is. Bad questions are caused by low internet, media or English-language literacy, all of which are worsened by longer text. — Bilorv (talk) 21:21, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I do like the idea of adding a short example question, though. "How do I create a citation" is a pretty good one. Clear and short. -- asilvering (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Added the example since that seems harmless, although that field only accepts pure text so the italic formatting you used wouldn't get rendered properly. Will let the discussion above resolve before editing the prompt, although I'm inclined to agree with FormalDude that the guidance should be edited, although I'm not, and have never been, a mentor either. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:39, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe change the text in the help panel that appears on articles correspondingly? Not to be nitpicky, but I think something like "Ask your mentor about editing" would be more concise. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 19:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

That's in a box labeled "get help with editing", so the context is implied, right? That is MediaWiki:growthexperiments-help-panel-button-header-ask-help-mentor * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

How do I find a mentor for someone?

Specifically this editor,[4] a good faith editor who clearly needs help. I don't have the time (terminally ill and with other priorities}/. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 09:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Note, while the account was created in 2006, there's been such a long gap in editing that the user is to all intents a purposes a newbie. See their talkpage. Bishonen | tålk 10:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC).

I can take them on and help them if no one objects. --ARoseWolf 11:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

At the moment, this user's mentor is ARoseWolf. I used {{#mentor:Futuristicediting}} to get the mentor's name. Maybe ask him too?

As the user has a very old account, they might not be aware of the fact that they have access to special:Homepage, where their mentor is presented.

As a reminder, to claim a mentee, just visit Special:ClaimMentee.

Hope this helps! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) thanks, but that would be a random mentor. I see I even have one. ARosesWolf would be an excellent mentor. Doug Weller talk 15:15, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't noticed that ARosesWolf already claimed the user! Good!

@Doug Weller, what do you mean by "random mentor"? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I did claim them and have opened a discussion to help them enroll where they will be able to easily ask questions to my talk page. I'll do my best to walk them through the process and help them with editing. I just want to say this here that it is an honor to do this for Doug who has helped me numerous times and had a huge impact on my editing and on my personal life through Wikipedia. --ARoseWolf 15:42, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

My mentor was presumably assigned randomly. Was yours? We all seem to have one. At the moment I seem to have been assigned a temporary one as mine is away. But I think I'll be ok. :) Doug Weller talk 16:06, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

They are all assigned randomly, yes.

We are considering to have mentors being assigned based on topics newcomers select, but for this we will need a critical mass of mentors English Wikipedia has not yet reached. In fact you haven't yet reached the number of mentor to provide a mentor to each newcomer... Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Why do I have a mentor?

I've been here for over 15 years, was on ArbCom, etc. Somehow I clicked on something that gave me that big question mark on the bottom right hand page. Doug Weller talk 14:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Every user has a mentor assigned, but most established users do not have "mentorship" options activated - you may have opted in somehow. In Special:Preferences you can uncheck the Newcomer editor features at the bottom of the page and see if that solves your issue. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Mentorship Twinkle welcome template?

Hi! I was wondering if there was some welcome template I could use with my mentees, as {{Welcome student}} doesn't really apply. — ♠Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. ♠ 18:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Ixtal! There's {{Mentor welcome}}, or this one I use that I ripped off from Panini! (though its current format doesn't use revisionuser). Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 18:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Lawsuit pending, I copyrighted that. Panini! • 🥪 18:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

What's with all the "noinclude" in there? Doesn't seem to change anything if I remove it? -- asilvering (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Two reasons, both because I'm lazy: at the bottom, I wanted it to auto-sign, and everywhere else, I was trying to get it to substitute page names correctly and I'm not incredibly familiar with that kind of markup so I just copied over from another template (I forget which) and it worked so I left it. "Noinclude" just means that everything wrapped in those <noinclude></noinclude> tags won't be included in a substitution of the page – so, for example, the <nowiki> tags will be removed at the end when the template is substituted, allowing the ~~~~ to sign it for me. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 20:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, here I was assuming you were just copying the source code out every time. That makes more sense! I'll just start substing this directly instead of stealing it and modifying it, then. Panini will have to sue us both. (you're welcome). -- asilvering (talk) 20:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Nah, too much work. I'd suggest double-checking that it correctly identifies you as the mentor, as I had trouble getting that to work correctly when I tried earlier, though I think it's fixed now. (Do we split the costs then, or do we have to pay double?) Perfect4th (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

yep, it works! Capitalized, alas, but I suppose I could always kidnap and edit it in the future if that drives me enough crazy. -- asilvering (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm already named in too many lawsuits right now (tongue in cheek) so I'll stick to @Panini!'s original template, modified by @Perfect4th, that remains for public use. lol --ARoseWolf 20:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Seeking feedback of 'beginner' editors for research

Dear Growth Team mentors, I hope this is an appropriate post to make.

The project I am attached to, Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects at Wikimedia Deutschland is currently holding interviews for the experiences of editors knowledge, awareness and experience of Wikidata and its integrations into the sibling projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and the others). We have heard from many expert or very experienced editors, but we lack insights and experiences from new or 'beginner' editors.

If any of your mentees may be interested or you have ideas on where I can post to reach this audience, I would be happy if you could share the Signup link below or reply to my post.

Interview Information:

• Conducted in English.
• Compensation is available.
• Sign up survey: This link can be shared and sent to interested editors.
• Experience Level: Ideally we are seeking feedback from editors who may only have a passing or surface-level knowledge of Wikidata and are at the start of their editing lifetime.

We are also taking feedback here in written form for those who cannot or do not want to attend an interview. Thank you for any help you can provide, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 16:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

A large but non-random sample of beginning student editors can be found through the Wikipedia Education program. These student editors have different motivations than are typical of new editors (i.e., succeed at their Wikipedia-associated university course) and are likely to leave Wikipedia for good when their course is over, but if that doesn't matter for the purposes of your research, maybe they could help. They have done surveys before, such as for their training program. Adding Sage Ross (WMF). Mathglot (talk) 19:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC)