[18:54:29] Reminder: office hour about instructional video is starting in about 6 minutes. [18:58:11] morning, Pine! [18:58:22] J-mo! Glad you're here! [18:58:48] glad I could make it. wasn't sure what my schedule would look like today (first day back) [18:59:00] :) [18:59:53] hey Pine and J-Mo! : ) [19:00:02] Hi i_jethrobot! [19:00:05] hey i_jethrobot! [19:00:15] I think halfak may be around here too. [19:00:41] Let's get started. [19:00:48] o/ [19:01:06] Hey J-Mo, welcome back [19:01:22] hi halfak! great to be here (seriously: beats lugging boxes ;) [19:01:22] For the first item on the agenda, I'd like to ask everyone to take a minute to look over the script outline. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_video_to_introduce_Wikimedia/Scripts [19:01:47] I'll pause a minute to give people some time to look. [19:01:51] * J-Mo is looking... [19:03:17] Ok, I'd like to ask for questions and comments about the script outline. [19:03:21] Pine - One quick clarification on the section headers, are these timings for the whole section, or for each topic in the section? [19:03:22] My general sense is that there's too much to cover for the time spans you have set [19:03:49] E.g. looking at "how to get help", you could spend 3 minutes just introducing the Teahouse. [19:03:54] i_jethrobot: the timings are for everything under that particular header. [19:03:55] Or explaining what IRC is [19:04:02] hmm [19:04:17] I'm trying to present options [19:04:23] Feedback: I would chop these up into separate, 3-minute videos. Asana does something similar with their intro videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/AsanaTeam/videos [19:04:23] I agree with halfak - Wikipedia policies for contributors (5 minutes) seems a bit of a low estimate. : ) [19:04:56] Pine, so this isn't really the script so much as a large tree that will be pruned into a script? [19:04:59] One of the goals is to get through the overview in about 40 minutes total, excluding specialty modules. [19:05:06] halfak: right, it's an outline [19:05:21] Things may be added, removed, or rearranged :) [19:05:25] Pine, just saying the words in this outline would be too much let alone after you flesh it out. [19:06:01] Pine: in addition to chopping these up into separate videos, I wondered if you had any plans to post them to YouTube, in addition to Commons? Content on YouTube is much more discoverable and sharable. [19:06:14] J-Mo: yes, that is a distinct possibility. [19:06:22] I haven't gotten that far yet, but it is likely. [19:06:47] J-Mo: YT has a CC-BY licensing option, right? [19:06:56] yep [19:07:06] halfak: One possibility is to highlight a few of what seem to be the best resources, and then leave the others in an "additional materials" section [19:07:15] or "additional resources" [19:07:39] Pine, how does that section work in a video? Maybe it will be part of the description? [19:07:55] We have a *lot* of help options, but I think there is a small number that seem to be heavily utilized. The others, not so much. [19:08:02] You really won't be able to put times on things until you have the script written. After a quick Google it looks like average speaking speed is about 120 words per minute. [19:08:13] Pine, +1 seems like this is the expertise that you can bring. [19:08:25] whittling down all of the docs to the stuff newcomers need to get started. [19:08:42] Pine: one module that might be helpful here is "finding things to edit". A lot of newbies jump in and try to create an article as their first move. But as we know that often ends in tears. So could be useful to have a 3-minute intro to finding stuff that needs improvement, that's relevant to the newbies interests. Smaller tasks, where they can get the hang of things and are less likely to see their work destroyed. [19:09:17] J-Mo: good point, I'll think about how to work on that. [19:10:15] I do think highlighting the teahouse is something that I'm very likely to do [19:10:35] including a how-to for getting engaged in the Teahouse [19:11:00] which brings us nicely to the next item on the agenda, "Good practices for onboarding newcomers that may be leveraged in the video series" [19:11:41] can you give an example of a "good practice", Pine? [19:11:59] halfak: while you're working on identifying productive newcomers and making relevant interventions to increase retention, I'm wondering if there are best practices that you've found for *how* to engage the productive newbies after you've identified them [19:13:30] J-Mo: for example, I have a hunch (and I think it's likely to be backed up by WMF data somewhere, that I'd like to see if I can get access to it) that AFC generally is poor for editor retention, while AFC with assistance from the Teahouse leads to higher retention [19:14:13] Pine, I'm not really a practitioner, so I don't generally engage newbies myself. [19:14:32] I would expect that AfC has a higher retention than just jumping right in to article creation. Having your first creation speedied is probably not the best way to "welcome!" [19:14:39] But I can tell you that the largest effect we have seen on retention in a controlled experiment came from inviting newcomers to the Teahouse. [19:14:55] for Teahouse, we focused on surfacing the community behind Wikipedia, in a positive way. That's why we encourage Hosts and guests to create profiles. So, one practice that you might adopt is introducing actual people (pictures, faces, and voices) in the videos. The series of intro videos produced a few years back (by Victor, maybe?) used this approach as well. [19:14:58] MajoraWP, I'm skeptical of this conclusion [19:15:31] AFC has a lot of problems and you are far less likely to get a good new article created through AFC than through direct article creation. [19:15:40] J-Mo: ah, excellent. Thanks for that info. [19:15:42] most AfCs are rejected, so it's still probably a negative experience. Halfak and I haven't analyzed the AfC + Teahouse data. [19:15:56] https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/Accept_Decline_Postpone/schneider14accept.pdf [19:16:01] AfC does have some high standards. So you're probably right. [19:16:24] Still AfC is full of wonderful people who are trying to help. [19:16:28] * yurb would also extend the "Wikipedia policies for contibutors" beyond 5 minutes. [19:16:31] I think it just has some workflow and visibility issues. [19:16:33] YES [19:16:49] and they deserve better tools. They're doing some of the most valuable work on wiki. [19:17:19] I'm hoping that this video series, in a way, will help out the folks who are trying to mentor the newbies in AFC [19:17:20] I never said they aren't. The work they do is greatly appreciated. [19:17:45] Suggestions about how to make life easier for the well-intentioned AFC helpers are also welcome. :) [19:18:01] In the scope of this video series, in particular. [19:18:17] I'm hoping that how-to videos will be helpful for those in AFC. [19:18:23] Pine, I have a general comment that I didn't get out earlier. It seems that the video series is geared towards covering content in a "you should know" sort of way. [19:18:29] MajoraWP: sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you were diminishing them. I was mostly just +1ing everything good about AfC [19:18:40] But it seems like it might be better and more effective to give newcomers strategies rather than knowledge. [19:19:03] halfak: can you clarify the distinction? [19:19:08] E.g. "Someone says an acronym at you and you don't know what it means? It's probably a Wikipedia namespace page. Type "Wikipedia:" into the search box. [19:19:19] You know Pine, I was looking at the policies section. You may want to go more in detail about neutrality and NPOV. Since some people come to view the NPOV [19:19:30] Rather than trying to teach newcomers every acronym. [19:19:38] halfak: good point, thanks. [19:19:46] That will save some time in the video [19:19:56] and probably lead to better engagement too [19:19:58] ^On that note, you could mention that the Project namespace is indexed. So typing in something you have a question about + wiki into Google will probably bring up the right page. [19:20:17] I'm trying to avoid endorsing external help tools, but such may be necessary. [19:20:34] It's a reality that external search tools are sometimes better than WMF's. [19:21:04] * Pine has had many painful experiences trying to find pages using WMF search tools [19:21:22] Pine: it would be cool to see a 3:00 minute "what the gender gap is and how you can help" video. Could point to projects like Women Scientists that are coordinating work around improving/creating gender-related content. [19:21:28] Pine, why does the Search box belong to WMF? :P [19:21:36] Doesn't it belong to all of us? [19:21:50] J-Mo: actually, there is another project that is working on something similar. I may see if I can coordinate with them. [19:22:00] So I was going through the "Wikipedia policies for contributors" section and I don't see anything about due weight. People often come to think that the NPOV policy means everything must be talked about equally when that really isn't the case. [19:22:00] excellent [19:22:29] MajoraWP: noted, I can address that. [19:23:13] halfak: as I understand it, the WMF Discovery team is trying valiantly to improve the user search experience. [19:23:55] Perhaps I should talk about how to use our current search tool, if I don't already. I'll check on that. [19:24:15] Pine, I'd teach people how to use the Auto-complete prefix search on wiki [19:24:18] J-Mo: what do we know about effective interventions for newbies, besides steering them to the Teahouse [19:24:21] ? [19:24:22] That's really handy and not something that google does. [19:24:27] halfak: noted [19:24:45] Pine, yelling at them generally goes badly. [19:24:47] :) [19:24:55] I bet. :) [19:24:55] I would also be very happy if the videos wouldn't bee too English Wikipedia-centered [19:25:42] But seriously, it seems that newcomers often show up with a Single Purpose or a POV to push. So socializers need to be patient and tolerant of these naive mindsets. [19:26:05] yurb: I've talked with Marti about that. I am indeed going to make an effort to make the content generalizable to other language Wikipedias. But inevitably there will be an ENWP focus. However, the series is intended to be translatable and editable for use by others, including for example someone publishing video modules in their own language. [19:26:48] Pine: generally, I strongly believe that steering people towards tasks that are a) relevant to their interests and b) easy/safe enough that they can BOLDly start performing them is one of the biggest unrealized newcomer engagement opportunities we have. [19:27:24] also, directing them towards groups of people who share their interests (wikiprojects, for example, if there's an active and newbie-friendly one that works on something they're interested in) [19:27:50] J-Mo, I disagree [19:27:57] J-Mo: noted. Speaking of that, do you know of any good pathways to identify and steer newbies to relevant and active Wikiprojects? I don't know of any current pathways that we have for that, other than informal word of mouth. I was intending to incorporate some material about how to find active and relevant Wikiprojects. [19:28:00] We tried that in Growth and it didn't work in any way we could see. [19:28:08] We tried it in all sorts of fun ways too. [19:28:16] halfak: when was it tried? I can't recall hearing about it. [19:28:22] this is the project that was cut off right as Growth dissolved, yes? [19:28:23] Maybe a UI can't direct people as good as an instructional video. [19:28:48] Most Growth experiments were some variation of "get them to copyedit first" [19:29:01] J-Mo, no, it's the one that was most well studied. [19:29:01] Yeah, I'm not doing that :) [19:29:26] yeah, I don't think copyediting is inherently interesting. Even for subjects I enjoy. But this is a conversation for another time perhaps. [19:29:28] First thing they'll be editing, under my current plan, are sandboxes, followed by making intros on their user pages. [19:29:31] What about the Wikidata game? [19:29:39] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians [19:30:00] See the 20 controlled tests. [19:30:25] Interesting, I'll look at that later. Thanks! [19:30:25] Really, they wrap up into 6 controlled tests and a natural experiment [19:30:29] I didn't know that had been tried. [19:31:12] J-Mo: I have Wikidata as an optional module. It might be produced if the grant is extended. [19:31:43] Or if the Wikidata folks produce it themselves, which would be fine too. [19:31:56] J-Mo, I don't want to shut down this direction. Solid hypothesis is that we did it badly in Growth, but new work should account for how we did it because of the lackluster effectiveness. [19:32:18] Do you talk about the Wikipedia Adventure at all? Learn to edit in an hour? [19:32:24] Pine: I was thinking of the Wikidata game in particular https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/ because it's fun :) [19:32:36] I get you, halfak ;) [19:32:48] MajoraWP: I liked the concept of TWA, and used that in thinking about this series. It was, however, pre-VisualEditor, and buggy. [19:33:25] It was certainly worth a try, and I wouldn't mind seeing an updated version of it. [19:33:32] I think this video might do the job, though. [19:33:37] I hope so. [19:34:00] halfak: can you expand on your last comment? Not sure I follow. [19:36:02] Perhaps halfak is distracted. Let's move on to the next topic [19:36:05] Thinking about directing newcomers towards non-page-creation tasks. [19:36:07] "What to name the video series when it is released to the general public" [19:36:18] I started some guided tours that use VE, recently. [19:36:19] Any thoughts? [19:36:24] Responding to J-Mo about what we learned from Growth and how that doesn't close the door. [19:36:42] "Wikipedia for fun and (non)profit" [19:36:45] :P [19:36:52] Is there good data about whether TWA was effective? [19:36:56] halfak: what are some directions you would recommend trying for which the door isn't closed? [19:37:52] ragesoss: we did a controlled study with some folks at Northwestern. We did not find a significant positive impact on retention. So, as currently designed, it doesn't look like TWA makes a large, general impact on new editor survival. [19:38:17] Pine, in this case, I was talking about specific class of intervention. [19:38:30] Giving newcomers specific tasks (that we think are good for them) [19:38:53] I think that having a little modal tell you to copy-edit things right after you register doesn't really work. [19:39:00] Ok, agreed. [19:39:01] Given our experimental data. [19:39:07] That's the only real door that is closed. [19:39:11] Got it. Thanks. [19:39:21] It's an open question how much that generalizes to "giving newcomers tasks" generallyu. [19:39:49] Different subject: naming suggestions, anyone? [19:40:52] One idea I've been pondering is "The Wikipedia Universe" or "The Wikimedia Universe" [19:41:26] Another might be WikiLearn [19:42:33] That sounds fine. I don't have a whole lot of name ideas, unfortunately… [19:43:23] Keilana: if you're around, feedback from you might be really helpful here. ^ [19:43:49] * halfak has no opinions on name [19:44:06] Ok. I'll explore this subject more later. [19:44:18] Next subject: Translation of the public communications related to the videos, and translation of the script [19:44:35] I've made translation requests for a post that can be put on VPs [19:45:19] I'm hoping to use language in the script that is relatively simple so that translation is easy, but keeps people interested. [19:45:58] yurb: any thoughts on best practices for translation? [19:46:04] You can also request help through translators-l. [19:46:23] * J-Mo has to duck out for next meeting. ttfn! [19:46:31] Perhaps I should subscribe to that list [19:46:39] J-mo: thanks bye! [19:47:06] whatami: any suggestions for the name for the series? [19:47:18] You might want to talk to Johan (runs Tech News) about this. He's very good at translation stuff. [19:47:25] Depending on what languages you want to put it into you could poke one of the people listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translators_available and see if they want to help. [19:47:32] Pine: if the video is with English subtitles at TimedText, traslation is easy [19:47:38] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Naming_things is hard. [19:47:58] yurb: that's the current plan [19:48:07] * halfak has to run too. [19:48:15] bye halfak! [19:48:20] Pine: regarding the name, preferably something that would show up in searches when people are searching "how to edit Wikipedia" [19:48:21] Pine, if there are follow-up questioon please feel free to email [19:48:23] o/ [19:48:42] yurb: good thought, any ideas about how to optimize search results? [19:49:05] I once made a video called "How to edit Wikipedia" and it collects views by itself on youtube [19:49:27] Now I regret I didn't make it better:) [19:49:52] So something simple and banal might actually work quite well for searches [19:50:11] Hmm [19:50:15] I'll think about that [19:50:29] Any other questions or comments as we wrap up? [19:50:38] Awesome project:) [19:50:44] Thank you :) [19:51:04] +1 on yurb's comment. Looking foward to watching it. [19:51:46] I'll likely make a few more announcements on mailing lists and village pumps as the project progresses. [19:51:59] Questions and comments are always welcome on the project talk page. [19:52:41] Sounds like we're done. Thanks everyone! [19:53:08] o/ [19:59:47] Pine - Inre: /what do we know about effective interventions for newbies, besides steering them to the Teahouse? [20:01:19] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Reimagining_Wikipedia_Mentorship/Final [20:02:27] I ran a mentorship space on en.wiki for a short time to test an automatic matching system between new editors and existing editors interested in mentoring-- it had some good outcomes, but was not sustainable. [20:04:26] One point of frustration for mentors was that some new editors did not respond to initial engagement, possibly because they dropped off the map right away. [20:05:56] There is also some qualitative research we did via interviews with new editors regarding other major help spaces on en.wiki. like TWA, AfC, the Teahouse, and IRC [20:06:11] er, except IRC isn't really "on" en.wiki. [20:06:14] but you get the idea. [20:07:06] i_ [20:07:12] err [22:00:54] cscott: I’ll catch up in -labs