Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2025-2026/Product & Technology OKRs

Metrics and data

What are some ways that data and metrics could better support your work as editors? Can you think of data about editing, reading, or organizing that would help you choose how to spend your time, or when something needs attention?  This could be data about your own activity or the activity of others.

• A way to see the most popular articles that have been tagged as having no references, or other issues, so people know these should be focused on. Possibly sorted by WikiProject (Music, TV, Football, etc) so we can work on topics that interest us that are also considered very important. This could be a regular post somewhere (Diff?) or twice yearly report. Whatever is less work for people. These lists already exist but as far as I know they can't be sorted by page visits. --Jimmyjrg (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for sharing this example, @Jimmyjrg. Further below, @IFried (WMF) writes about a new tool that might help with this to some extent: we recently launched a new feature called Collaboration List, which allows you to find events and/or WikiProjects, and we’ll be adding a search filter for topics very soon. This is available to all wikis who have the CampaignEvents extension enabled. You're adding a new dimension to this by suggesting that such a list is not only helpful to find others to collaborate with, but also to just generally find new interesting tasks to work on, grouped by why they require attention (missing references, missing images, etc). I like that idea and it's something we're thinking about for next year specifically. Another way to accomplish what you're suggesting might be to create a feed that brings your attention to things that might interest you but aren't yet on your watchlist. Would something like that be helpful? SPerry-WMF (talk) 17:02, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @SPerry-WMF, the Collaboration List sounds great. I couldn't find any events relating to Australia, for example. So, I guess no Australian groups use it right now. But if all chapters etc. can be pushed to use this, then I think it'd be great. Perhaps in the meantime WMF can pay someone to scour all the chapters, affiliates, groups, etc. and add them all to the List as a means to push people to engage with it?

  A feed of interesting articles could work, depending on where it is and how easy it is to find or use. Currently, the Newcomer Homepage on English Wikipedia suggests articles to edit based on some filters, but I find it doesn't work well. For example, if I select my interests as Oceania and Music, I get articles suggested that are related to Oceania or Music, and not articles related to Music in Oceania, so I get articles suggested to me that I have no interest in. So, if it was similar to that then it might not be useful, as I want to be able to filter down articles by subjects such as biography, music, and Australia to find a biographical article about an Australian musician that needs to be worked on. Jimmyjrg (talk) 17:27, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimmyjrg Thanks for the feedback! I agree that filtering on the Newcomer Homepage could use some further improvements. The Growth team previously experimented with adding more advanced filtering options to the Suggested Edits feed, allowing users to narrow down results using an "and" topic filtering rather than only allowing "or" topic filtering: T301825.

  While engagement with the feature was decent, analysis showed that many users ended up with zero suggestions. Unfortunately, those users often didn’t adjust their filters and were less likely to return to the Homepage after receiving zero suggestions.

  I hope we can revisit this as we work on broader Homepage improvements. Ultimately, we need to refine topic selection to allow for more precise filtering while keeping the interface intuitive, especially for newcomers and mobile users.

  Are there any search or filtering interfaces you’ve seen that handle and/or logic effectively? Would it make sense to hide some of the complexity within an “advanced search” option—providing more powerful tools for experienced editors while keeping it simple and accessible for newcomers? Thanks again for taking the time to provide feedback! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 00:47, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  @KStoller-WMF I'm not sure of other filters that work well with and/or, as they seem to always break depending what's thrown at them. But I like the idea of having an advanced option, and maybe telling the user what number of articles match the filter would help. If you get a message telling you there's zero articles about Australian Music, but there's still 100 articles in Australia and 200 in Music, then that could push people to play with the filters more. I rarely look at the Homepage now, but when it first appeared I thought it was great. Jimmyjrg (talk) 15:51, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks—that’s a great insight. Ideally, we can improve the UI to prevent “0 results” from being a frequent outcome while also guiding editors toward relevant results when it does happen. Providing clearer next steps—like showing how many articles match broader filters—could encourage users to adjust their selections rather than getting stuck. I appreciate the feedback! KStoller-WMF (talk) 16:32, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Adding on to this to say that in the WikiProject Unreferenced Articles Backlog drive I remember people mentioning that the "popular articles" list was very popular, so this might see some use (at least during the backlog drives). Mrfoogles (talk) 20:26, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

• Часть инструментов должна быть на более видном месте (например, статистика просмотров, поиск правки), часть данных должна быть гораздо чище, поэтому ими невозможно пользоваться (например, в русскоязычной википедии я считаю совершенно бесполезными 99% rq|style, да и многие другие установленные rq). Lvova (talk) 21:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for your response, Lvova! When you say you would like to see tools like view statistics, edit search in a more visible place: are you looking for information about views and edits to articles you have created? What kind of questions are you trying to answer?

  I am not sure what you mean by "rq|style"; could you link to an example? KZimmerman (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

• Expand the data routinely provided by the current WikiStats information to include Very Active Editors (100+ edits/month) and Very Very Active Editors (1000+ edits/month). We used to have this information and it was helpful in assessing community connection. Risker (talk) 01:21, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks @Risker! I am interested in better understanding how you used the data on WikiStats about Very (and Very Very) Active Editors (100+ edits/month). You mentioned they were helpful in assessing community connection – in what kinds of circumstances would you find yourself looking for that information? Or how would you use it? KZimmerman (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

  @User:KZimmerman (WMF), the "active editors" stat is for 5 edits in a month. That's not very much engagement on most wikis. A truly engaged editor is likely to be doing 100 or more edits a month. The "active editor" stat is almost useless, except that it indicates that those editors have likely shown up more than once. The "very active editor" status shows that the project has at least X number of people who show up regularly. I'm less concerned about the "very very active" editor numbers except in really large projects, where it may be useful. Many of us on large projects are always looking for statistical evidence of engagement, and bluntly put, I think this information is already being gathered and used internally by the WMF and there's no good reason for it not to be available to the broader community. We used to use it, and it's difficult to justify server load for someone to write a script or quarry inquiry to run it routinely from the user side. Risker (talk) 03:41, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for your feedback @Risker! And I apologize for missing this in my response earlier, but Wikistats does have information about editors with 100+ edits a month. It’s not identified by the name of “Very Active Editors” – instead, you can get this information by selecting “Editors” and filtering on the dimensions available: Editor type = “User” and Activity level = “100 or more edits”. Here’s an example view for English Wikipedia: https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/contributing/editors/normal|line|2-year|editor_type~user+(activity_level)~100..-edits|monthly . (However, for 1000+ edits: we have not tracked this consistently and Wikistats does not have it as a dimension.)

  We are interested in better measuring engagement – especially as we look to

  nurture multiple generations of volunteers

  – and it’s helpful to hear what kinds of signals you find valuable.

  KZimmerman (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• When discussing potential changes to on-wiki policies, it's not uncommon that someone asks for data about the topic under consideration (eg. number of editor rights given manually and by autopromotion; number of articles moved to the author's sandbox etc.). Usually, there's no data for it. While Wikimedia gathers (and exposes) plenty of data at stats.wikimedia.org, it rather does not dive into how the community is doing (at least no deeper than: "they edit", "people register"). I don't know a platform that would help communities in assessing their health by facilitating collection of data like: how many people contribute to central discussion places, how long does the novice users have to wait for their mentor to respond, how many AfD requests are there and how people contribute to them. Such data would usually be possible to be extracted from the MediaWiki dumps (but likely will have to be adapted to per-wiki workflows). Being able to observe such data can IMO change our attitude from "what if" to responding proactively to bad indicators about communities' health. Of course, I'm aware that not all metrics would be applicable to all wikis, therefore I think that even mere existence of a system to support data collection and presentation could help, while being open for technical wiki contributors to implement specific code to process data for a specific metric. Msz2001 (talk) 16:57, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for your response, @Msz2001! I understand that more detailed, explorable data about specific community and contribution behaviors would be helpful for things like informing policy changes.

  To your point, some information like this can be extracted from dumps – but the data is unstructured and not built for easy observation and exploration. Are there common questions you see being asked, that might guide how to structure the data and where to make it available? Or do you think the questions vary widely by wiki and situation? KZimmerman (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

  @KZimmerman (WMF), I believe the exact questions may depend on specific wiki workflows or issues they are tackling. Here are some ideas I've had (they may be specific to plwiki, my home wiki):

  • how many AfD discussions are there and how many people participate in them over time? what are the results of AfDs?
  • how many featured articles do we have over time; how many people create and review them?
  • how many users are blocked and what is their age and time of the block? (eg. do we block novice or long-standing contributors; are these short or long blocks?)
  • how many long-standing contributors become inactive or how many return after inactivity?
  • how many users are granted rights? (especially the lower-level like editor or auto-reviewer)
  • how many articles are moved back to the user's sandbox after they created them in the mainspace? (and maybe, how many of these moves are undone shortly after – if any)
  • how many revisions are marked as reviewed over time and how many edits of newcomers are reverted instead? how many people review the edits?

  I believe some of them may be relevant to other wikis as well, sometimes by changing some parameters of the question. In general, I think that information like above (and/or similar) could be very worthy to have when we're thinking about how sustainable the communities are and what are the most risky areas that should be taken care of.

  I'm aware that some of these points are easier than others to gather the data. For one of the points – review statistics – we even have a bot to post them every week to the wiki's noticeboard, but it's rather hard to analyse and compare over time. Msz2001 (talk) 15:36, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Editing

When does editing feel most rewarding and fun for you? When does it feel most frustrating and difficult?

• When i'm undistracted is when its most fun. Edit conflicts and pedant word sluething by other contributors can be a real frustration many times this drives me away from a topic. Lack of understanding when using terms that are outright offensive here but unrespected from other english speakers, but we are expected to know offensives terms other places and respect the need not to use them. Gnangarra (talk) 07:26, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
• When you see unexplained indef blocks of good editors on small language projects, when you see nothing but good work every else they have been. When you ask the blocking admin for details they deny even placing the block. Maybe a UCoC panel independent of the project could dig deeper into these especially in to information that isnt public. Gnangarra (talk) 07:26, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
• Greater separation between Affiliates and language projects as there is tendency to own small languages, that enable offline cliques or cabals to control who edits and what can be contributed. Gnangarra (talk) 07:26, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  It feels rewarding to me to contribute new/updated information . But most days on-wiki, it feels frustrating and drives me away to find a watchlist full of edits that are either vandalism, promotion, addition/change of content without citation, etc. Many of these edits are done by IPs. They are particularly frustrating as trying to communicate with them to educate them fails, reverting them doesn't solve a problem as they may revert it back, reporting them doesn't solve the problem, recognising and reporting them as a known sockpuppet doesn't solve the problem. They just keep coming back with a diffent IP address. We have to end anonymous editing; it does damage to the content of Wikipedia (some of which probably goes undetected) and makes the rest of us miserable and frustrated trying to deal with it. This is not 2001. This is mature encyclopedia; we need to defend the content developed by so many with so much effort and the current approach does not work. Even if one person has reverted a bad edit, lots of others get to see it on their watchlist and waste time discovering it has already been dealt with. I frequently have days now when I think "I'm not going to look at my watchlist today, I just can't cope with how depressing it is." We need to change our rules to support the good contributors doing good things and deter/detect/block the bad contributors. No matter how much work I put into an article, any IP can come and delete it in a single edit; let's make it HARD to do bad things, instead of easy. Being able to contribute to Wikipedia should be a privilege earned through completion of a basic training course, not just grabbing a new IP address. Kerry Raymond (talk) 05:02, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  For my entire life, I've always been quite happy to edit Wikipedia anonymously with just an IP. Tiny grammar updates and simple things like that.

  But these days, I would prefer Wikipedia to have "a gate." Just the most basic security.

  Ironically, I post this with an IP lol. But yes, I would make an account if it means more security for the long-term future of Wikipedia. 73.69.44.15 01:25, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Kerry Raymond, @73.69.44.15. Thanks for your thoughts on this matter. This is something the Trust and Safety Product team has been thinking about for some time. We are currently working on Temporary Accounts project which touches upon this problem. As part of our work on this project, we are going to make it easier to communicate with IP addresses. Logged-out user identities will be more “sticky” and persist even when a user changes their IP address. You can read more about it in the FAQ. Although, this is not full-proof and users can still evade this mechanism to avoid detection. We are also approaching this problem from other angles. For example, the Moderator Tools team has worked on AutoModerator which should help with a lot of obvious vandalism cases. We are also in the early stages of a project that aims to provide functionaries with data about a user’s behavior as determined by their actions over time. There is more to come on this in the next few months.

  Ending anonymous editing is a complex topic. There is a perennial proposal about it on English wikipedia that lists some good reasons for not pursuing it. It is important to know that the vast majority of IP edits are not harmful and are not reverted. It is also true that most vandalism does come from IP editors, but they also make valuable contributions that enrich our content. In 2019, a group of researchers from the University of Washington came together to document the value of IP editing on our projects. I’d suggest you give it a read as well.

  To substantiate this with actual data, we ran a couple of experiments to understand how turning off IP editing might impact our projects. The most notable example here is that of Portuguese Wikipedia. At the beginning of October 2020, Portuguese Wikipedia decided to turn off IP editing. We took this opportunity to collect data to understand the impact of this change on the project. The most recent published report about it is available here. The takeaway is that while most metrics improved significantly, the “net non-reverted edits” went down. We have another version of this report that is currently in draft, un-published state that shows approximately 30% decline in the number of net non-reverted edits since ptwiki decided to turn off IP editing. This is an alarming number and indicates a severe impact to the project in terms of content accumulated.

  In summary - going by the data and research we have so far, we cannot conclusively say that turning off IP editing will be beneficial for our projects. NKohli (WMF) (talk) 05:01, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  It might be beneficial in terms of retaining the editors you already have; dealing with constant misbehaviour is incredibley demotivating and I have heard a number of former contributors blame that for their departure. Have you measured that? Might now, you are comparing one IP edit by someone who may never make another edit as being the same as one edit by an experienced contributor who is likely to make many more edits. Also, we could look at rate-limiting and/or size-of-edit limiting on IPs. And automatic semi-protection for any article that has reverted IP edits for a couple of days initially, then automatically extending to longer period with each successive occurrence (e.g. binary back-off). This would be useful against a persistent IP trouble-maker or where you have an article that (usually for some real-world reason) attracts a lot of attention creating problematic IP edits from many people (similar to a social media pile-on). Kerry Raymond (talk) 00:11, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  As they say, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. After 20+ years, surely we can see what isn't working with IP editing. Kerry Raymond (talk) 00:18, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Kerry Raymond -- thank you for your thorough responses to our questions! I have a follow-up for something you said: "Even if one person has reverted a bad edit, lots of others get to see it on their watchlist and waste time discovering it has already been dealt with."

  Have you ever tried filtering your Watchlist to exclude edits that have the "Reverted" tag? This would keep any edit that has already been reverted out of the list. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  That does not work if you have your watchlist messages emailed, and if you have a large volume as I do, email is the only manageable way to deal with that volume. Also, sometimes the problem edit is dealt with by some other way than outright reverting, e.g. f there are a following edits, reverting is sometimes impossible etc. Basically we need much much better watchlist tools, particularly if you have a big watchlist. I'd be very happy to have features like, "discard if the edit has been reviewed by LIST OF USERS I TRUST TO REVIEW WELL, "don't show me edits on my watchlist done by LIST OF USERS I KNOW I CAN TRUST TO WRITE WELL" (of course, even well-intentioned people can make mistakes). I'd also like a tool that warns WikiProjects that there are articles for that project that appear to have low or no *active* users on the watchlist. At the moment, you can get told "fewer than 30 watchers" but many / all of them may no longer be active OR may be active editors but not checking their watchlist. Now it's easy to determine who is active (just look at their most recent contribution date) but it is less easy to determine who is actively watching, but even if we could just address the first issue of "active" that would be a good start. We really need tools that work effectively at scale with an ever-growing encyclopedia with a declining active user base. Kerry Raymond (talk) 23:55, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  I note that having a large watchlist means you can't edit it as the tool times out before everything is loaded. Again, we need tools to be effective at scale, not just for a test case of a couple of articles. We need to take maintenance of the encyclopedia seriously. Boring, but necessary. Kerry Raymond (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  This is large watchlist bug was reported on phabricator in 2022 and nothing has happened. Kerry Raymond (talk) 22:44, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

• As a Wikisource editor, I am the most frustrated when I upload a new book to Commons as a large multi-page PDF or DjVu file with high quality scans and I have to wait few hours or few days or do some technical magic to make the file ready to use in wiki (metadata available in other wikis and hundreds of thumbnails generated). A few days after uploading, the motivation that got me started on that new book project disappears. If it is Public Domain Day, we want thumbnails to be available on January 1st, not a week later. Various thumbnail generation issues often force me to use external tools instead of the on-wiki file directly. This is also very frustrating. Ankry (talk) 17:13, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
• It's most frustrating when you can't find a good reference or prove notability. A wild idea would be for WMF to fund a seperate website/project employing journalists to research, write, and publish articles on topics needing references on Wikipedia. The project would be independent and not a Wiki, but Wikipedians could pitch/vote for subjects to be worked on. --Jimmyjrg (talk) 20:42, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  I agree—demonstrating notability for a meaningful but underrepresented topic can be incredibly frustrating! Your idea doesn’t seem too wild at all; in fact, it reminds me of the work done through the Knowledge Equity Fund. This fund awarded grants to external organizations that promote knowledge equity and supported Wikimedia communities in addressing knowledge gaps (2024 Diff post about Knowledge Equity Grants). KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:49, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

• I feel most satisfied when I can make complex things clear when editing. For example, when two people have the same name and the details of biographies are mixed; preparing the disambiguation page, adding relevant templates (distinguish, see also, etc.), or adding footnotes to clarify something satisfies me a lot. Writing the lead section of the articles is also one of the most rewarding parts of editing. Think about what is the first thing the reader should know about the topic and summarize things shortly with a neutral point of view; if I achieve that I become the happiest person; because I see that many editors contribute a lot by bringing pieces of facts about the topic; but they find it very difficult to writing the lead section and i feel myself useful when i do that.

The most frustrating thing about editing is seeing newcomers bringing their knowledge and perspectives about topics not so-well covered at wikipedia (such as intangible cultural heritage or women scientists) are not welcomed; how such articles created are easily tagged for deletion for reasons which would not be a reason for deletion for other articles. It is tiresome to spend days discussing with editors who would like to keep topics they are not interested in or know about away from Wikipedia. It’s painful to see how Wikipedia is turning into “a popular culture encyclopedia” where only topics covered in mainstream media are allowed in. --Basak (talk) 06:17, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@Basak Thanks for offering feedback! I completely understand your frustration. It’s disheartening to see newcomers contributing in good faith, especially on underrepresented topics, only to face obstacles that discourage them from continuing.

I’ve been thinking about potential ways to support newcomers better, such as pairing them with Mentors who share similar interests. This might provide guidance early on to navigate these challenges and help strengthen their contributions. That said, I know this alone would not solve the issue. What do you think could help create a more welcoming environment for new editors? Are there specific changes or approaches that could better balance maintaining quality while encouraging diverse contributions? I’d love to hear your thoughts! KStoller-WMF (talk) 00:46, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the comment @KStoller-WMF. In some cases mentoring is a good way to overcome the difficulties of newcomers. Still, it is not very effective when there are not many people in a wiki to take the mentoring role and the very same people excluding underrepresented topics are also becoming mentors.

When very few contributors are power users in a wiki project, it is not surprising that they tend to own the project. Those contributors feel threatened by newcomers, especially those bringing expertise about underrepresented topics. I can not think of many ways to fight the situation but, I see three alternative approaches:

• trying to change the attitude of those power users
• increasing resilience of newcomers to negative comments and discouragement
• encouraging those experienced but silent editors reluctant to go into discussions or take any other tasks to get more involved.

I am one of the founders of the user group in my country. Our group's focus has always been on bringing as many new contributors as possible hoping that some will stay. There are also some cases where bringing newcomers and seasoned editors together in face-to-face events worked well (Those who think of each other very negatively on wiki acknowledge how they misunderstand each other and start collaborating on the projects after they meet). However generally, the old editors prefer remaining anonymous and do not attend meetings. --Basak (talk) 10:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, @Basak! The Growth team has focused heavily on newcomers—ensuring they have a clear homepage and tasks to get started. Much of our work has centered on building tools to support newcomers and, as you noted, increasing their resilience to negative comments and discouragement.

That said, your first and third points are especially insightful: we also need to explore ways to engage experienced users and strengthen their role in fostering a welcoming environment. Ultimately, we need to strike a balance—providing newcomers with the tools and onboarding they need to succeed, while also equipping experienced contributors with the support and capacity to welcome new editors and ideas in alignment with the movement’s mission.

Thank you again for sharing your perspective—it’s truly invaluable! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 00:22, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

@KStoller-WMF: the third point about silent users, is that after many years we grow to learn that many arguments arent worth the energy because otheruser dont listen or are too woundup in defining every single word of guidelines that we face a sea of pointless dribble. This het worse when that user doesnt know the topic so focus' on every individual word. Gnangarra (talk) 08:43, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

@Gnangarra Great point—endless arguments can be exhausting and discouraging. Many simply disengage rather than constantly defending their contributions. Creating space for more constructive discussions and smoother consensus-building is key to a welcoming environment. Thanks for sharing! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:30, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

• Let me add one more thing. It's motivating to see Wikipedia pages I created or improved is listed at top of the search results of the search engines. Currently, there is something that frustrates me about it. When I search something at Google in Turkish, a bad machine translation from English Wikipedia appears on the top of Google search results although there is a good article on Turkish Wikipedia. This wasn't the case before, I think this priority given to English WP on Google search results started in 2024. I believe everyone should have access good-quality articles on their native language, especially about topics related to their own culture, and put so much effort to create such articles either by editing by myself, or organizing events where experts and many others contribute. But at the end, it'is frustrating to see a bad translation of English WP always appear on the top. It is also very confusing because people go to English WP, they can not always find their way to Turkish version; many have the impression that this bad Turkish comes from Turkish WP. Even I am getting confused, frequently I go to pages to fix errors and find out I am not at Turkish WP; don't know where I am, where is the mistake. On the other hand I also get annoyed because I see this situation as an obstacle for accessing to local editor's work and it gives the impression that English Wikipedia editors perspective and language are always superior to others. Basak (talk) 07:37, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hello @Basak - as this is related to how Wikimedia content is appearing on an external platform, it is not something that be directly controlled by the WMF. Nonetheless, it is definitely in the interests of all of us here to make sure that when Wikimedia content is reused, it is done in the best way possible!

  I work in Partnerships at the WMF, and I would be happy to raise this specific issue to our search-engineering contacts at Google the next time we meet. We are already highlighting to them few different concerns that different Wikimedians have identified, including these two:

  • https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T366790
  • https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T380573

  The point you raise is different to those, but it is comparable in that it is about ensuring Wikipedia's language editions are accurately displayed. The most useful thing you could do in the mean time, is to document the problem that you are seeing in a dedicated Phabricator ticket. Could in your documentation could you please tag me, and reference this conversation. Also, could you please include some examples - with particular attention to showing how it is easy to get confused about which is human-written and which is machine-generated text. [If you prefer, you can write this as an email/document which I can transfer to Phabricator for you] Thank you, LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 09:52, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• Меня сильно фрустрирует русскоязычная практика ВП:КУ и ВП:КУЛ. Номинаторы могут выносить статьи на удаление, практически не мотивируя номинацию, после чего красная плашка может висеть годами; им не надо доказывать, что "значимости нет", достаточно сказать "значимость не показана", после чего все кругом обязаны как-то статью спасать, а номинатор просто вынесет на удаление следующий десяток. И это пугает при планировании новых статей. Lvova (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
• Мне нравится, когда мои статьи улучшают по делу вместо того, чтобы вешать на них ту или иную плашку. Когда я пишу статьи о своём родном городе, а потом иду по нему и представляю себе всё в некотором временном объёме, со знанием об изменениях, нереализованных планах, целях -- это правда доставляет удовольствие. И мне нравится, когда тема, над которой я работаю, может быть поддержана поиском информации и формулировок в моей юзергруппе, когда все решения надо принимать самостоятельнее, я чувствую себя при редактировании хуже, так как проект достаточно токсичный, чтобы за неверно в контексте переведённое слово пришли ругаться, а не помочь с исправлением. Lvova (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for sharing this, @Lvova. I lead some of the product teams here at WMF and a topic we're really interested in is understanding how we might help encourage more positive interactions between volunteers. To give you an example: what's striking to me is that a good edit essentially is an edit that doesn't get reverted, meaning the feedback for an edit tends to be primarily negative or it's just not present at all. One way to encourage more positive feedback, for example, would be to make giving Thanks easier. Is there something specific you think would be helpful in your community in that regard? SPerry-WMF (talk) 03:36, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  Мне сложно говорить за всё сообщество, но -- почему благодарность доступна только зарегистрированным и не заблокированным? Из-за ситуации в стране мы часто используем VPN, что не мешает читать проект; но благодарность нельзя импульсивно отправить, если IP-диапазон заблокирован, почему так?

  Наверное, это не очень технический момент, но: в нашем сообществе долгое время звучала мысль, что среди википедистов "незаменимых не бывает", периодически на форумах идут обсуждения блокировки типа - "не надо его блокировать, он же полезный участник, активный, с большим количеством правок" - "да какой он полезный, у него малые правки; или у него есть правки, но он мало пишет статьи; или он пишет статьи, но не одной правкой и 5кб, а не 35кб; или он пишет статьи одной правкой по 35 кб, но не про высшую математику..." Обесценивание в русскоязычном сообществе -- потрясающе сильный навык, и я при всём том, что делаю (можно посмотреть статистику аккаунта) постоянно чувствую её на себе. Хотела сказать, "даже я", но возможно, чем более участник активен, тем выше риск ошибки, тем легче получить негативную обратную связь от сообщества (а положительная обратная связь будто бы не предусмотрена, если ты делаешь всё нормально, то это просто НОРМАЛЬНО, а не ХОРОШО). Lvova (talk) 14:24, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

  К слову, я могу рассказать, как персонально я использую функцию "поблагодарить за правку" (довольно регулярно, с момента ее появления):

  1) Когда кто-то исправляет мою ошибку. Если я такое замечаю, то почти всегда, без вариантов, отправляю публичную благодарность
  2) Когда хочу дать понять участнику, что заметил его изменение и согласен с ним (тут хотелось бы немного иного функционала, но и имеющийся тоже годится).
  3) Когда вижу, что кто-то починил то, что было до этого сломано/испорчено.

  Отдельно стараюсь отправлять публичную благодарность в обсуждениях, вместо того, чтобы писать комментарии вида "Поддерживаю", "Согласен" и т.д. Во всех наших вики-обсуждениях, как правило, специально культивируется подход "обсуждение - не голосование". Но при этом участникам все равно бывает важно и полезно знать, что кто-то ещё, прямо сейчас, согласен и поддерживает их точку зрения.

  Отдельно стараюсь "благодарить за правки" тех участников, с которыми ранее складывалось не вполне конструктивное или благожелательное взаимодействие. Поверял на себе - получая вдруг такой "привет", думаешь - "о! а вот тут он вроде бы вменяемый..."

  Тут важно отметить, что если кто-то начинает отправлять "публичное спасибо" за обычные правки, то это сразу же вызывает сильное раздражение, т.к. "засоряет" ленту уведомлений. Но сам инструмент никак не помогает участнику решить, стоит отправлять благодарность в данном конкретном случае, или лучше не надо. Kaganer (talk) 11:41, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you @Lvova and @Kaganer - these are all great points and it's good to hear that you are finding useful ways to instill positivity into your interactions. Thank you for making that a priority. Something I think plays into this challenge as well is that generally when we know someone personally, it's easier to understand the intention behind their feedback. Written feedback can come across as cold and it can easily be misinterpreted, but when you know the person it's coming from you can factor in their motivations and have a more constructive discussion with them. So one hypothesis I have is that more opportunities to collaborate might help mitigate this negativity as well, because it would be easier to feel confident enough to provide positive feedback and it would be less likely to misinterpret the intention behind feedback you receive from someone you've worked with directly before. Do you also think that more collaboration opportunities could help with this? If so, are there any activities that come to mind that you'd like us to consider adding? SPerry-WMF (talk) 17:27, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Да. Такие (хорошие) механизмы, как домашняя страница новичка или менторство (наставничество) нуждаются в дополнительной поддержке и пропаганде внутри сообществ. Сейчас бывает, что ментор вместе с новичком вместе обороняются от более агрессивно (категорично) настроенных участников, которые хорошо знают "лакуны" в правилах и имеющихся практиках, и успешно на этом паразитируют.

  Также очень важно изучать практики, которые реально действуют внутри языковых сообществ. Я тут выделяю проблему бессрочных/долговременных блокировок участников и IP-диапазонов, а также всё, что касается вопросов удаления/восстановления статей. И далее вести работу с сообществами, принуждая их кодифицировать эти практики (потому что сейчас они часто довольно сильно отличаются от того, что записано в многословных, плохо организованных и зачастую устаревших правилах и руководствах).

  Вообще, за 24 года накоплен довольно большой массив справочно-нормативной документации на разных языках, которая все это время создавалась и дополнялась достаточно хаотично и бессистемно, "по мере надобности". Всё это устаревает и требует масштабной переработки. Но у сообществ на это обычно нет ресурсов. Kaganer (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  В частности, проблема бессрочных/долговременных блокировок IP-диапазонов в русской Википедии - крайне остра, но длительные обсуждения на форумах ни к чему не приводят.
  Кстати, я считаю, что необходим регулярный внешний аудит работы проверяющих (CheckUser), так как со стороны сообщества качество их работы проверить практически невозможно. Kaganer (talk) 19:08, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  Отдельно напишу о проблеме, относящейся в основном к Википедии, которая занимает лично меня. Я считаю, что нужна специальная программа по развитию и поддержке средств работы с библиографическими ссылками (и вообще, ссылками на источники).

  Система оформления ссылок на источники очень сложна для новичков. И сайт сам по себе плохо не помогает им в этом разобраться. Но меня занимает ещё несколько вещей. Опишу их в отдельных сообщениях. Kaganer (talk) 19:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  1. Очень многие интернет-источники устаревают и перестают быть доступны. В период военных конфликтов и экономических/политических кризисов эта тенденция усиливается (люди беднеют и умирают, организации закрываются, архивы не всегда сохраняются, веб-сайты перестают работать). Существующие средства архивации интернет-ресурсов имеют свои ограничения, и не всегда надежны. Необходимо, чтобы Фонд если не напрямую финансировал какой-то ресурс интернет-архивации, то все же уделал этому повышенное внимание. Это, например, касается поддержки средств выявления не архивированных ссылок и их принудительной архивации, если это возможно. А также предоставления удобной статистики по этой теме, чтобы участники сообществ могли видеть масштаб проблемы и системно заниматься исправлением недоступных ссылок. Kaganer (talk) 19:03, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  2. Часто бывает, что в статье (например, биографической) использованы как источники, напрямую посвященные персонажу статьи, так и более общие обзорные источники. Эти же общие источники могут быть использованы и в других статьях, в том числе в новых статьях новичков. И на сайте мог бы быть инструмент, который бы помогал новичку:
  - сформулировать тему статьи, чтобы сформировать нужный набор категорий
  - на основании этих категорий предложить список (правильно оформленных) общих источников, уже используемых в статьях этой тематики
  Это нужно, чтобы не заниматься поиском и ручным копированием. Kaganer (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  3. Я вижу, что есть тенденция использовать Викиданные (Wikidata) как библиографическую базу. Для русской Википедии это все ещё работает очень плохо, т.к. нет (или я не знаю) удобного инструмента экспорта в Викиданные уже оформленных источников, и с другой стороны - нет хорошей инструкции, как потом это использовать в статьях. Kaganer (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  4. Также очень не хватает глубокой статистики по использованию источников - какие источники (и их авторы/редакторы) использованы в каких статьях, темах и т.д.? Хотелось бы прямо из статьи, увидев в ней какой-то источник, иметь возможность посмотреть: в каких статьях он ещё использован? какие участники добавляли этот источник (а также удаляли из статей)? И т.д. Kaganer (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

  5. Даже очень хорошие источники часто устаревают - выходят новые издания, появляются новые работы, которые полностью или частично опровергают предыдущие (либо в целом, либо в отношении отдельных тезисов/фактов/трактовок). Сейчас нети никакой возможности указать, что предпочтительно использовать "источник 1" вместо "источник 2" по некоторой теме. А у "источник 3" есть более новое издание. И таке, чтобы потом при просмотре/редактировании статей, где указанные источники используются, эти пометки отображались бы в виде рекомендаций/предупреждений. Я понимаю, что все это реализуемо, если всю базу источников экспортировать в Викиданные, но не вижу системной работы (и пропаганды) в этом направлении. Kaganer (talk) 19:29, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

• Editing on Wikipedia used to be a fun time for me (and all contributors) when there was the opportunity to create and expand articles on related topics, searching for sources and cataloging as much information as possible within the project guidelines. The difficult and frustrating part is losing all willpower to edit there because other contributors decide that your content cannot be there. When they decide to "watch your steps", monitoring your every comma, to the point of causing you anxiety attacks until you give up on the project. I imagine that many people lose interest in the project for these reasons, because it is ingrained. .J. ^tlk 03:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• 私たちのユーザグループは昨年、日本語版ウィキペディアの編集者アンケートを行いました。私たちは結果を「ウィキペディア編集者のモチベーションと不満　Motivation and Complaints of Japanese Wikipedia Editors」前後編として、英語と日本語で"Diff"に投稿しました。テーマが同じなので紹介します。

この結果が、あなた方の参考になれば幸いです。

前半

• • English
  • 日本語

後半

• • English
  • 日本語--Kizhiya (talk) 13:32, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• 私自身は、今はあまり編集する時間が取れませんが、調べものが好きな独学者で、自分の知識欲を満たすためにウィキペディアの記事を書きます。何であれ物事をやるには、締め切りや決まったフォーマットなどがないと難しいので、ウィキペディアの記事を書くのはちょうど良い刺激の材料になります。
• 私がやる気がなくなる時のことを書いてみます。Googleとのパートナーシップ関係があるのは知っています。やる気がなくなるのは、ウィキメディアプロジェクトに時間や末力を捧げたボランティアの努力の結晶（一部ではなく、ほとんどすべてを）を、どこかの大きな企業、国家、宗教などが、自らの利益やプロパガンダのために使うのではないかと思い浮かべてしまった時です。
• また狭量で申し訳ないのですが、私はウィキメディア・プロジェクトでよく使われているキース・ヘリングふうの絵を見ると苦痛を感じます（お好きな方には申し訳ないです）。東アジアでは好まれない絵柄だと思います。ウィキメディアプロジェクトでは個別の地域の好みは反映されないのかと思うと、やる気を失います。デザインなどのローカライズも必要ではないかと考えます。--Kizhiya (talk) 14:15, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  追記:この絵です。こちらのページに掲載されているイラストです。Grants:Start

  しかしながら、私は、これらのイラストに対して、自分がナーバスになっていたと思います。違う文化圏のイラストに対して、私は自分自身がもっと寛容になるべきだと考え直しました。 Kizhiya (talk) 15:01, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

• Editing to me is most rewarding when you get onwiki or offwiki recognition. My biggest frustration is that citing is too difficult, which leads to slower editing and conflicts. For instance, citoid quietly returns low-probability search results (an recent error almost get somebody topic banned, as most people couldn't believe citoid to be this error-prone). Or the fact VE citations don't get a human-readable name, but a number instead. Or the various issues with sfn in VE. Or the difficulty in copying a source in VE, only to change the page number. It's such a shame the wishlist is not yet functioning as it should to address this. Femke (talk) 17:12, 3 February 2025 (UTC)
• From Fabius Lector at French Wikipedia: face à la méthode de construction par « collage » où ça avance sans vision d'ensemble, sans plan, avec toutes les peines du monde à obtenir un accord sur où on va, dès lors que des contributeurs n'ont pas forcément ce souci voire récusent qu'il soit utile. Besoin sans doute excessif de ma part de cohérence-contrôle (j'me soigne...), mais ça peut être frustrant l'impression que la qualité ne progresse pas ou même qu'elle régresse faute de coordination des interventions. [follow up] Juste une idée pour favoriser la coopération : améliorer les outils permettant de savoir qui sont les auteurs principaux d'un article et si ils sont actifs. J'utilise Qui a écrit cela (Who Wrote That?) qui facilite la chose et ce genre d'outil pourrait peut-être s'intégrer. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  Merci pour tes idées, @Fabius Lector. Nous émettons également l'hypothèse que la régression de notre nombre de contributeurs s'explique en partie par le fait que l'expérience des contributeurs est confuse et fragmentée, parce-que au fil du temps, nous avons réagi et réalisé des améliorations sans une vision unifiée des outils et des fonctionnalités. C'est pourquoi nous sommes en train de créer une stratégie à long terme dont seraient responsables les équipes du groupe Contributors de la WMF (Editing, Growth, Campaigns et Moderator Tools). L'un des domaines d'intérêt que nous envisageons est d'aider les volontaires à organiser leur travail de manière plus centralisée et de les aider davantage à créer des backlogs et à trouver des opportunités de travail intéressantes. Quelles sont les autres méthodes que tu utilises actuellement pour organiser ton travail et trouver des opportunités de contribution intéressantes ? SPerry-WMF (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

  @SPerry-WMF, quand la coordination est difficile, je travaille seul en brouillon en proposant à qui est intéressé de faire des remarques pour que le résultat remplace ensuite ce qui est dans l'article.

  Mais il y a peut-être d'autres possibilités : sur fr-WP, il y a des sous-pages en page de discussion, par exemple fr:Discussion:Wikipédia/À_faire pour indiquer les travaux à faire, et ça pourrait s'utiliser pour des informations de long terme comme une sous-page "Plan" qui donnerait des explications sur l'axe de traitement, la structure etc., que les nouveaux contributeurs aient une vue d'ensemble de l'article comme projet à réaliser. Une sous-page "Reprise" pourrait aussi être utile si un article est à reprendre de manière importante, une sorte de brouillon collectif avant de faire les changements.

  P.S. : Trizek did not translate my remarks and I continued in French but I can write in (bad) English if it's easier for the WMF team. Fabius Lector (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Fabius Lector, j'ai pris l'essentiel, n'hésite pas à compléter !

  La conversation restera en français. Ce n'est pas uniquement parce que SPerry-WMF le lit, mais surtout parce que nous rendons ce processus de co-construction inclusif. Voilà pourquoi nous discutons dans la langue dans laquelle les personnes faisant leurs retours sont le plus à l'aise. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:03, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

  Merci pour tes suggestions, elles sont très utiles ! En fait, nous réfléchissons comme nous pourrions améliorer la collaboration entre les volontaires - ton commentaire sur la création d'un article auquel autres volontaires sont invités à collaborer s'aligne bien avec ça et jaime bien l'idée d'un brouillon collectif. Est-ce qu'il y a d'autres moyens de faciliter la collaboration que tu voudrais avoir à ta disposition ? SPerry-WMF (talk) 04:02, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

We want contributors to receive more feedback and recognition for their work, so it doesn’t feel like nobody notices the effort they spend on the wikis. What kind of feedback and recognition is motivating to you? What nudges you to keep editing?

• peer to peer connection, small community meetups help. I've seen some forms of recognition that are over the top especially participation certificates. I'm concerned that attending the Wikimania host cities is becoming more of right than an opportunity I'd like ot greater emphasis on multicity and online connections. To me recognition is less immportant than access but one can point of recognition cshould be seen great work else where should result in over turning indef blocks. Gnangarra (talk) 07:32, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  The issue isn't so much about not getting a pat on the back but preventing/addressing harrassment, threats, and other hassles that arise from contributing Having reported a threat to Trust and Safety, it might be nice if their response was something more reassuring than "sorry it happened, I hope you will keep on contributing". I didn't exactly feel recognised and appreciated in that interaction. If we report a bug, get it fixed, rather than sending an automated email every few months that it's been reassigned to someone or someone has been added or deleted to the list of contacts for it -- actually DO something. I've given up reporting bugs, as very few get fixed. Meanwhile, we have a "growth team" project that sends out new contributors to "fix spelling" without telling them there are different variants of English that need to be respected. As a result, Australian content has its "spelling fixed" to be non-Australian-English and then that edit gets reverted. Who wins from this situation? Nobody. Content is damaged, Australians are upset, and a new contributor has a bad experience. Again, I've reported this issue more than once, yet it continues. So, my ask is genuinely make contributing a less depressing experience rather than write an AI-tool to send personalised "thank you" messages (which is what I am guessing is being proposed). Kerry Raymond (talk) 05:47, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  It's actually quite difficult to report any case of harassment/abuse that happens here. The times I've had the opportunity to speak to someone, they've asked to discuss the matter within the community itself. In real life, does anyone discuss harassment directly with the harasser? .J. ^tlk 04:01, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for sharing your experience, I appreciate your candor and feedback, @Kerry Raymond. You mentioned being frustrated by bugs. While it's true that not all bugs get fixed (by WMF or volunteers) there is a reason for this - we have to make choices every day about whether our time is best spent fixing broken things, only some of which are useful, widely used, maintained by their owner, or have straightforward solutions, or whether to address other problems that might be bigger or more pressing. There's definitely a lot of tradeoffs, and WMF engineers fix hundreds of volunteer submitted bugs each quarter. What bug is bothering you the most right now?

  The issue about "fixed spelling" to be non-Australian-English sounds annoying, and I see an opportunity for us to take a look at that with some of the newer tools we're building that could potentially capture these types of edits before they are published, like Edit Check.

  And finally, I appreciate the point you make about making contributing less depressing rather than using AI to generate automated messages - I agree entirely. There are lots of improvements we can make, and AI can be a powerful tool and certainly has a place in that, though we believe that Wikipedia is still fundamentally a human endeavor, so we're taking a closer look at how we might be able to create more avenues for recognition and interaction between people. When you notice another editor is doing a great job, is there anything you tend to do to let them know? SPerry-WMF (talk) 01:19, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  If they are a new user, I try to write a message on their user page saying "thanks for your great work on ARTICLE NAME" to keep them coming back. If I can see they are having difficulty doing something e.g. make a citation, I try to show them how, which is VERY DIFFICULT to do on a talk page. "Now at the top right of your screen, you should see the word "WHATEVER", click that, then scroll down until ..." not knowing what skin they are using and, as I use the old vector skin not the current one (as it is very difficult to use on my small screen laptop), I am flying blind on what they may be seeing or not seeing; so this is a lot of effort and may or may not be effective. If they are a not new user, I just use "Thanks" mostly. Kerry Raymond (talk) 00:32, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  Bugs. Let me count them. When I use my iPad, I constantly get asked to login. Even though, I can see my user name top right of screen, so I am logged in. I often end up doing IP edits because I just gave up on continually logging in again and again and again. When I use my iPad, 4 tildes doesn't sign.

  Visual Editor. When working with large tables, searching often takes you to the text you search for, but to somewhere above/below it -- I think it is finding the text ok, but positioning it on the screen is wrong. Related to that is that if you click at the start of field in a table to edit and start typing, you can't see the text you have typed. So you click again and type and it seems ok. But unbeknowst to you, that text was added at the top of the article. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_schools_in_Darling_Downs&diff=prev&oldid=1239885200 shows that I am adding text down at line 1200+ but the word "the" is being added at the top of the article (out of sight of my editing!).

  Features. Visual editor. You can't name citations. This drives text-editors crazy. I use both editors and it drives me crazy too when I am text editing. It is often a reason I use text editor instead of visual editor because I want to use meaningful citation names. And for those who never use visual editor, they don't understand why it is happening and get annoyed with Visual Editor users, thinking they are doing it deliberately because they are lazy/stupid. And if you are copying text editor content from another article that has the same name as an citation in the current article, the Visual Editor *assumes* without asking that you don't intend it to be the same citation as the one it already has and renames it. Yet for me, it is almost always the same and I want to reuse it. If the text of the citation is identical, why is there a need to create a duplicate citation? And if they differ, please show the user the two citations and ask if they are trying to reuse the existing one or not. For anyone doing a non-trivial amount of editing, you do have to use the text edior some of the time (VE is good for article content but not so good for working with templates, many of which don't have TemplateData defined, or if they do, it's only for the common params not all the params etc). So I think the assumption that "these things aren't needed in the Visual Editor" (a line I've heard) overlooks that it is not just the newbie using the Visual Editor. Kerry Raymond (talk) 01:01, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  Another bug or absent feature depending on how you like to see it relates to thanking users. If someone does a series of edits to an article, when it comes up on my watchlist, I can see a single diff of all the edits, but I do not get an option to thank them. You only get the option to thank on the diff of a single edit. So, the person who has done more work is less likely to be thanked! This should be made possible. As there might be intervening edits by others, it would be nice if a series of edits could be shown to you in a way that perhaps shows the contributions of each in a different colour or something with the options to thank each of them (as appropriate). Kerry Raymond (talk) 22:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Kerry Raymond Thanks for sharing the issues that you have had staying logged in on iPad. I understand how frustrating that must be and thank you for continuing to edit anonymously despite this. We have been working over the last few months to make login compatible with the features that are being added to web browsers to protect user privacy by preventing cross-site tracking. Safari's anti-tracking features are the most restrictive, which makes me think that this is the reason that you are being continually logged out. The good news is that we intend to gradually roll out a fix for this over the next couple of months. You can find more information about this work on the project page for SUL3. JTweed-WMF (talk) 18:11, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Kerry Raymond - that's very helpful. I've forwarded your bug reports / improvement suggestions to the relevant teams. Something we are looking into in particular is how to potentially improve the mobile editing experience for VE (per recent recommendation from the Product and Technology Advisory Council), so your feedback is very timely and feels aligned with the PTAC recommendation. Thanks again for sharing all your insights! SPerry-WMF (talk) 23:47, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Gnangarra, thank you for this response! Yes, small community meetups and peer-to-peer connection can be crucial ways for people to connect and find recognition. You also bring up a great point that not everybody can attend large in-person events, like Wikimania, but there should be other opportunities for connection, including online ones. Some tools have been developed in the last few years to promote collaboration on the wikis, such as Event Registration and the Collaboration List, but there’s a lot more that can be done. So, here’s my follow-up question: When you say that access is the most important, can you explain a bit more about what you mean by that? And what kind of online or connection opportunities would you like to see on the wikis? Thank you! IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  Events have fixed timetables, Wikimania is early August. Hackathon is in May, regional events also follow a regular timetable. Then at affiliate levels there is tendency to do everything on the same at the same time each month. What all of this does is restrict who can attend we end up creating echo chambers. Change the time, change the day, change the dates. As an exanple; ESEAP has scheduled in mid afternoon meetings on the 1st sunday of the month until december, this is what I mean when considering access and connection opportunities. When timezones come in the equation removes even more potential access, not every one can a join meeting at 2am or 4pm. Gnangarra (talk) 12:01, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Gnangarra, thank you for the response and clarificationǃ Yes, it is true that it can be hard to coordinate meetings with people who live in different timezones and who have different schedules. Perhaps it can help if there is more transparency around all of the events happening at the same time (through features like the Collaboration List), so people can flag if there are conflicts or problems in attending. However, some of this also comes down to communication between prospective participants and organizers, so that organizers understand the times that are best for people. This is something we could consider for a future feature for Event Registration, for example -- in other words, we could have an optional question to ask if another date/time works better for participants. Do you think it would be helpful if participants could have ways of sharing this information with organizers? IFried (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think a single point of message can be useful, asking for alternative dates & times helps too. Organisors could also schedule a second meeting time covering the same area as the set time and move that around to ensure a wider set of voices can participate. Yes this does put some extra effort on orhanisors to collate meeting notes and share thoughts already expressed. Gnangarra (talk) 08:48, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Gnangarra, these are helpful ideasǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

• I edit for an imaginary audience - that one imaginary person in a distant place who will learn something new from my contributions and be happy-. Maybe hearing stories about people who read one small fact at a Wikipedia article and were inspired by that to learn more, or how material found at Wikimedia projects was useful for a teacher in her class, etc. could be motivating. It’s also very motivating when a fellow Wikipedian editing about similar topics in my wiki or other wikis finds my contributions useful for her edits. Events that would help encounter such people and spend time together could be very motivating.Basak (talk) 06:43, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Basak, thank you for this comment! First, I love what you shared about understanding the impact on readers. There is currently the Impact Module, which gives some insights on editor impact. But you bring up a new, compelling idea – the question of how to tell a rich story of the evolution of the content and how it impacted people’s work, thought processes, etc. There’s a lot to think about there, so thank you again for sharing! Also, on the topic of finding events to collaborate with like-minded editors: We have recently launched the Collaboration List, which allows editors to find events and/or WikiProjects that may interest them. You can find events by wiki, and we’ll be adding a search filter for topics very soon. However, it’s a new feature, and there’s a lot more that we can do. So, as a follow-up question: You bring up events as a way to encounter like-minded editors. I would be interested to learn more about this. What kind of events would be especially valuable to you? What kind of feedback or interactions with other editors would you like to experience at these types of events? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the follow-up questions @IFried (WMF). First, i want to share that I know a lot of users are motivated by seeing the kinds of numbers shared at the Impact module, especially the number of views on articles they edited. However, there are other kinds of users such as me who do not care about the number of views. Because what we edit is not popular topics, anyway. It's not likely that very many internet users will search topics i edit about (how many people would be interested in reading articles on topics such as 10th-century folk poets who lived in villages at Easetern Taurus Mountains?) What i do care is knowing that those few readers interested will access the knowledge I shared and they will find it useful. Therefore hearing stories matters. Who might be the reader profile of my edits on such topics (researchers, local people of Taurus Mountains...), and how they benefit or inspired by my edits? I will probably never learn those. But maybe collecting some reader stories and publishing them for Wikimedians in blog posts might be inspiring for some editors

About events with like-minded editors; I would be happy to meet with editors in other wikis who are working on the same or similar articles I edit in my own wiki. I have an anecdote about this. One year i prepared a suggested articles list about Turkey for CEE Spring article contest. And that year at a Wikimedia event in Berlin, I met with an Arabic speaking wikimedian who created biography articles for the CEE spring contest and he asked if I was the person who suggested those names in the list of Turkish artists and told that how he enjoyed learning about those names and editing. This was very motivating for me to continue organizing the contest, and taking care of suggestion lists. I believe an environment for such encounters be created in wiki environment and during face-to-face wiki events. A similar experience was when at a Wikimania a Mongolian editor asked me where I was from, found out that there is no article about my town in his wiki and directly opened his lab top and created a stub article. Those are unforgettable moments that tie me to the Movement. Not everyone can have the chance of such experiences in face-to-face events but maybe online versions of such encounters could be possible. I know that most active users prefer remaining anonymous, especially in my community; still in such events sharing more about ourselves, and talking about what motivates us to edit, and what are good memories of collaboration on wikis could also be very helpful in creating a better environment at wikis.Basak (talk) 02:37, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

@Basak, thank you so much for sharing that thoughtful and personal replyǃ It really shows the power of connecting contributors with each other, and it also shows that there are many different ways that people can feel recognized for their work. I also love the explanation you shared about 10th century folk poets from the Eastern Taurus Mountainsǃ It shows that, sometimes, it's not only about the volume or quantity of people who read/appreciate something, but it can also be about people who feel a special interest in a topic and would like to appreciate the work of others in that space. We'll be thinking about examples like these when we try to develop new and/or improved ways for people to connect, collaborate, and receive recognition and feedback for their work. Again, thank you for taking the time to share all of thisǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

• Я рада благодарностям, дополнению статей, счётчику просмотров (и поэтому -- ЗЛВЧ). В пределе хочется большей видимости этой работы как именно моей работы со стороны внешнего общества (пусть на краткосрочной дистанции в текущей ситуации это и не очень хорошая идея, в пределе это что-то про значимость для Википедии за то, что делается для Википедии :)). Lvova (talk) 21:45, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, thank you for this response! It is great to know that thanks, additions to articles, and pageviews are all helpful information to you. Here is my question: Is there any more data on your editing that you do not get today that you would like to see? Thank you in advance! IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  For now, it is hard to find things like 'how many articles about women/about cultural Heritage of Saint-Petersburg I wrote'. Lvova (talk) 09:19, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, great pointǃ In other words, it sounds like you're saying that you would like more insights on your impact related to certain topics. Is that accurate? If yes, I think that is a great suggestionǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, it is regularly interesting, but hard to count. Lvova (talk) 00:12, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, yes, we currently have limited infrastructure around counting/measuring impact in this way. However, the first step is even identifying what is useful to track today, so we can then determine what we may want to track or share in the future. So, thank you so much for sharing this and explaining your reasoningǃ It is very helpful as we think about new ways that we can provide recognition, feedback, and a sense of impact around people's work on the wikisǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

• Mostly the little things – thanks, personal messages, etc. --Jan Myšák (talk) 16:03, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jan Myšák, thank you for sharing thisǃ Yes, the little things can make a big difference. IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

• The most rewarding feedback is when Google integrates in it's summaries a correction or addition made recently by me in a Wikipedia article. I always look at the before/after of how Google displays a Wikipedia article in the list of results for the same research made with the same word or expression before and after the edition. Many times, for significative informations that were lacking in the article (a definition, a date, names of related people, etc...) the change appears very fast in the results of the Google research. This shows (but should be confirmed by systematic researches) that adding informative content on Wikipedia, even a sentence, has a direct impact on the display of the results of the searchengine. We should test this more systematicaly to know more about the impact of content addition on Wikipedia on other platforms and databases. Notice that content search is not rewarded at all on Wikipedia at the moment, only the physical integration on the Wikis is counted in the editcounter. Also, Wikipedia edition is focused on article creation but not on modifications at the level of the paragraph. Perhaps we should reconsider this. When having millions of articles, this also demands a followup, or the content gets obsolete and we'll finish to have more errors than articles. Errors, even small, make their way in the whole ecosystem and also alter the quality of the results of AIs. But, searching significative content takes a lot of time, much more than simply integrating content in the wikicode. And it's precisely this type of content modification (correcting errors, adding lacking information, aligning information in several places to ameliorate the coherence) - many times hard to find and taking a lot of time to search - that Google (and probably AI engines) are seeking for and valorize. But the contributor does not get reward in the community for this. When you spend a lot of time to search a specific info, your editcounter does not get higher. It doesn't bring you XP in the community. So we should think about how to ease and give more value in the community to manual indepth researches to get significative content for Wikipedia. Waltercolor (talk) 17:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Because the wikis are so large, it can be hard for editors to decide what wiki work is most important for them to spend their time on each day. What information or tools could help you choose how to spend your time? Would it be useful to have a central, personalized place that allows you to find new opportunities, manage your tasks, and understand your impact?

• None. The only standard is whatever I feel like editing right now. There are a fair number of editing discovery tools but outside of en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives I haven't used them of late. I've already got far more projects on the go than I can reasonably expect to complete any time soon.Geni (talk) 21:06, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. I have no problem finding things to do on-wiki. There's too much to be done; it's finding the time! New opportunities? Yes, people are always trying to draw me into some project or team (and most are worthwhile endeavours), but unless you set yourself some boundaries, you achieve nothing as your time is frittered away here and there without real impact. Personal prioritisation is a more complex question. Is it better to improve an article that has a high readership or better to write about a new topic or expand a stub with lower readership. Is a city more worthy of my efforts than a town? I'm not sure that with a volunteer community, that it's particularly easy to steer contributors to new project or one that needs work (much easier to do that when you pay people!). Another problem is that 20+ years on we have a lot of stale content. E.g. "In 2016, a replacement bridge was proposed [cite]" begs the question was a new bridge built, when was it built etc? Is it time to remove the "proposed bridge" content due to lack of updates? This problem is magnified when there is a lot of such content added by one or a few enthusiastic contributers who are no longer active. We don't tend to have conversations about maintaining the encyclopedia, the conversation is usually all about getting new content or filling content gaps. Kerry Raymond (talk) 06:04, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• If the WikiProjects would more heavily used they'd be a great place to find encouragement or ideas around what to edit. Most of the ones I was part of have low engagement now and I've given up on them. I think lists like Women In Red make are great, and the local chapters could create/promote their own lists and push them...but I think a lot of people like to just do their own thing too. --Jimmyjrg (talk) 20:46, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• I am not sure if a centralized place would help but making some suggestions to editors at where they are might be a good idea. For example, "you created this article, would you like adding statements to Wikidata item of it?"--Basak (talk) 06:53, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  ...making some suggestions to editors at where they are...

  @Basak, assuming it's accurate for me to understand the above as you saying something like, "I see value in offering people actionable feedback/suggestions that are relevant to what they are attempting to do in that moment.", then we seem to be aligned!

  Building on what you shared, a few resulting questions for you...

  1. What – if any – other suggestion ideas do you think could be worth exploring?
  2. What Wikipedia policies/concepts do you notice newcomers struggling with?
  3. Can you also say a bit more about what might be contributing to the uncertainty I perceive you to be expressing about the value of this "centralized place"? E.g. might you have experienced something similar before and noticed it not being impactful in the way you would have expected? Might the idea need to be made a bit more clear for you to more fully assess it? Something else?

  And in case you're curious: there are two initiatives in active development (see below) that are attempting to "meet people where they are" and could, potentially, translate ideas of the sort we're talking about here into features.

  Active initiatives

  At present, there are two approaches we are taking to "meeting people where they are":

  1. Proactively suggesting contributions people can consider making while they are reading Wikipedia on the web. This project is called Structured Tasks and there two suggestions being actively developed: Add a link and Add an image. This project builds on existing work the mobile apps and Growth Teams have done to suggest edits to people in a centralized feed.
  2. Reactively offering people actionable feedback about Wikipedia policy while they are editing using the visual editor. This project is called Edit Check. There are three Edit Checks available at almost all wikis with work on more "Checks" underway (Paste Check and Peacock Check) and many ideas the team is considering for the future.

  Of course, if either of these projects brings questions/ideas to mind for you, I hope you'll share. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 06:17, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Oh! And @KStoller-WMF, as the person leading the work on proactively suggesting contribution opportunities, please add to/edit anything I mentioned above that you think warrants it. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 06:20, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Dear @PPelberg, thank you for your message. Yes, I meant exactly what you wrote: “offering people actionable feedback/suggestions that are relevant to what they are attempting to do in that moment." What I had in mind at that moment, was suggesting contributors other wiki projects they might like to contribute; for example if someone editing a biography article at WP, it is possible to suggest adding quotations from this person to Wikisource; or feeding properties of related Wikidata item. But of course, such suggestions could be useful for seasoned editors; not for newcomers.

Please let me summarize the first points coming to my mind about what newcomers struggle about.

• The most important point that newcomers struggle with is the concept of notability. Most users understand “notable” as equal to “important”; this is by far the most important problem, I believe.
• Secondly, the concept of “reliability” is very problematic. Many times newcomers tend to believe that reliable source means “primary source" or "official source"; therefore they think it is good to take all information from the “About us” section of the website of an organization or celebrity when they are creating a Wikipedia article about them. On the other hand some think that they have to provide proof of every piece of knowledge they added, so if they edit an article about musician, they add many links to photos of concert affiches, album covers, and concert programs as proof that this concert or album was made.
• Another concept is “relevancy”. Sometimes newcomers do not share same understanding about what sort of knowledge is relevant for an encyclopedia. For example, the marital status of a person might be added, but discussions and details of the reason for divorce are irrelevant. However, newcomers are sometimes very enthusiastic about adding every piece of knowledge they come across on the internet to Wikipedia articles. Once added, deleting such edits creates tension because that is perceived as censorship!

As a response to the third question; when I read “having a centralized place” I took it offering a new address/point where users should visit to find suggestions on tasks” and I just found the idea of a new place tiring. As an old editor I would like to continue what I am doing as usual and wouldn't like to be pushed to visit or discover any new place. But I would be open to suggestions or help as long as I come across suggestions as I continue my work where I always do.

Lastly, thank you very much for information on Structured Tasks and Edit Check. I didn’t know about them. I teach Wikipedia editing to newcomers; it’s good to learn they will be reminded to add a citation when add a large amount of text. I can show this in trainings. Structured tasks made me think about whether i can use it in creating “suggestion lists” for schools -Our user group create suggestion listss about what kind of contributions their students could make and sometimes it might be good to add items encouraging to start with small tasks like adding internal links.Basak (talk) 10:52, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

@Basak: thank you for offering this additional context and thorough responses to the questions I posed!

I'm glad to know when we each say, "meet people where they are" we're referring to a shared idea.

Now, in an effort to make it easier for us to track the various topics we're talking about here, I'm going to respond to the specific points you raised in-line, below…

What I had in mind at that moment, was suggesting contributors other wiki projects they might like to contribute; for example if someone editing a biography article at WP, it is possible to suggest adding quotations from this person to Wikisource; or feeding properties of related Wikidata item.

Understood! Can you please say a bit more about what might be attracting you to the idea of building suggestions for contributions to other projects?

E.g. Might these be projects you are active in that you think could benefit from more people contributing to them? Might you think that the kinds of contributions these projects value could be aligned with the kinds of contributions you've noticed newcomers intuitively seeking to make on Wikipedia? A combination? Something else?

I mostly contribute to Turkish Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very well known and used in my country but Turkish versions of other Wikimedia projects are weak. That’s why I am interested in suggesting people contributing to other projects and making newcomers aware of those projects. Editing Wikipedia articles is not very attractive or fun for everyone, some newcomers leave after trying to edit a little bit; but if they know that there are other projects they might contribute to, they might become active editors in those projects. For example, I know someone who started editing Wikipedia about towns she visited, but she didn't enjoy it much -she found it difficult to add references for facts, etc.-; however, she found it more fun to contribute WikiVoyage. Another person might tend to copy large paragraphs from other sources; this person might be more likely to be happy editing wikisource. A biography editor might be interested in adding quotes to Wikiquote. For those people who are enthusiastic about one particular topic, the idea of not limiting themselves to editing Wikipedia articles on that topic, but contributing to every Wikimedia project they can would be a good suggestion. For example if someone is interested in climate change, in addition to editing related wikimedia articles, she might also be interested in creating diagrams, tables to explain topics and uploaded them at Wikimedia commons, feeding wikidata with up-to-date data.--Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

The most important point that newcomers struggle with is the concept of notability. Most users understand “notable” as equal to “important”; this is by far the most important problem, I believe.

Mmm, understood. Okay. As someone experienced helping newcomers learn about contributing to Wikipedia, have you noticed a pattern in what helps newcomers to understand the distinction between notability and importance, and crucially, successfully apply that understanding? And further, might you have language to describe why you see this as the most important problem?

I ask these questions thinking about how we might reverse-engineer the kinds of aha! moments you've been able to cause…

For many newcomers the motivation to make their first edits is editing/creating articles related to them (about their family busines, a friend or relative, their town, the school they are graduated from, the soccer team of their village, a local food they like…). This might be simply because they want to add information about things they know best (of course such topics might be triggering conflict of interest, here i would like to discuss those cases that don't trigger conflict of interest).

Many times the articles that newcomers are willing to create are not notable -or the topic is notable but they don’t know how to find /add references that will prove that this topic is notable-. And it is very common that the first article a newcomer created is being deleted. Sometimes first there is a discussion about the notability of the topic and some wikipedians tell “this topic is not notable”. When hear this, newcomers feel insulted. They think “Wikipedia” tells them that topic which they see a big value is snot important, and not worth covering at Wikipedia. For wikipedians is very normal to say “It is not notable”, there is nothing wrong there; they don’t even need to explain much. However for newcomers, it is confusing. They are frustrated when their first article is deleted, and most of the time never try again.

I give Wikipedia training and at the begining I make about 30 min. presentation to explain the main pillars of Wkipedia and values. According to me only after such an introduction, editing can start more safely -still not guaranteed-. It is very important to first explain the concept of notability. I encourage newcomers first edit some existing articles rather than creating one; and when they create their first articles I tell them to make sure that it will be about a topic that is unrelated to them (write about astronomical objects, insects, whatever but not about your village…). I encourage them to create their first article at Sandbox; make it reviewed by an experienced editor if possible. I tell them it is very normal if the article is deleted, say "please do not take it personally, everyone has started this way."

One thing I am working recently on is preparing some fun questions/games for newcomers attending my training sessions. I try to prepare a “wheel of knowledge” where participants turn the wheel, and discuss why that topic is notable, or not and what kind of references are needed to be able to say “it is notable”... I am thinking of playing such games before starting “editing session”.

Please let me add that editors are more likely to delete articles created by newcomers, even if those articles were written at a very similar quality to existing articles. In addition to train newcomers, how to fight with deletionism and tendency to delete articles of newcomers should be discussed--Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

Secondly, the concept of “reliability” is very problematic. Many times newcomers tend to believe that reliable source means “primary source" or "official source"; therefore they think it is good to take all information from the “About us” section of the website of an organization or celebrity when they are creating a Wikipedia article about them.

You using the word "problematic" here feels significant and important. Can you please say a bit more about why you decided to describe the difference in what newcomers understand "reliable" to mean and what Wikipedia understands "reliable" to mean as "very problematic"?

I have a sense you might be alluding to something deeper that I'm eager to explore with you. I'm also exercising some restraint here by not yet sharing what I'm thinking so that I do not inadvertently affect what you share.

When a newcomer create article by using primary sources or official sources, she is usually suspected of editing for advertising and even, being a a paid editor. As a result she might get very unpleasing reaction from some editors. Many times seasoned editors tend not assuming good faith. They do not think that this newcomer may not have good writing skills yet, or she mihgt be lack knowledge about which other sources to use, the first and only thing that comes to mind is that this might be bad faith edit. On the other hand the newcomers thinks she is creating article using the right sources, do not understand why she has been attacked. Therefore, the reliability concept becomes problematic because of this tension it might trigger.

In my opinion, the editor community is very sensitive about content policies but many times disregards conduct policies such as civility. Therefore, it is not enough to work on how to strengthen newcomers, there must be some work to search why experienced editors behave in such way and how to foster conduct policies among all.--Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

On the other hand some think that they have to provide proof of every piece of knowledge they added, so if they edit an article about musician, they add many links to photos of concert affiches, album covers, and concert programs as proof that this concert or album was made.

To make sure I'm accurately understanding this point: is the issue with the behavior you're describing the fact that in including external links within the "body" of articles, newcomers are defying the external links policy many projects consider important?

No, i am not exactly talking about adding many external links to the body of the article. I am talking about adding many links as “reference”. Let’s assume I am a newcomer editing about biography of person X and i write “In year 2020-2024, person X toured Europe to give talks about this topic.” Then i add 12 “references” near this sentence - Each one is a link to announcements of the speeches of person X in different places, at different times.- At the end, the “References” section looks like a list of announcements of his speeches. When other editors say “There is not enough sources at this article to prove the notability”, I add another similar 10 links as the reference. But unfortunately, all those links do not prove the notability. Then the article is getting deleted and I take this as a hostility. That is a scenario I see from time to time. --Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

Another concept is “relevancy”. Sometimes newcomers do not share same understanding about what sort of knowledge is relevant for an encyclopedia. For example, the marital status of a person might be added, but discussions and details of the reason for divorce are irrelevant. However, newcomers are sometimes very enthusiastic about adding every piece of knowledge they come across on the internet to Wikipedia articles. Once added, deleting such edits creates tension because that is perceived as censorship!

The tension you described makes a lot of sense and is something we're trying to relieve by offering people feedback before people publish edits of this sort. We're also thinking longer-term about whether exposing opportunities for newcomers to see edits other people are making could gradually build their awareness for what Wikipedia edits "look" like. This way, they arrive to contributing new content, and/or modifying what is existing, with an intuitive understanding already forming.

If hearing this sparks any ideas within you, I hope you'll share.

I agree that newcomers should start with editing current articles rather than creating new ones. That is what I recommend to people around me. However, I have some concerns on this approach as well. The newcomers should not be made to believe that existing articles are perfect, they should not believe that they have to learn how the current Wikipedia articles are structured and then copy it when they create articles. They must learn to be bold enough to bring their perspectives and criticize existing articles. My concern is that, on a given topic, existing Wikipedia articles might be full of irrelevant information; who will fix that if newcomers take them as an example?

I suggest that to understand what might be relevant for encyclopedias, people should be exposed to traditional encyclopedias. I would like to find a way of doing this. Now, I am working on a project where me and friends will visit high schools to teach Wikipedia editing in a 4-week program (8 sessions). In this program, our plan is first to ask students to find information from paper-based traditional encyclopedias and read them. We also design some exercises where we ask students which sentences/facts could be found at Wikipedia and which ones are more suitable for a news site, social media message, commercial sites etc. --Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

As a response to the third question; when I read “having a centralized place” I took it offering a new address/point where users should visit to find suggestions on tasks” and I just found the idea of a new place tiring. As an old editor I would like to continue what I am doing as usual and wouldn't like to be pushed to visit or discover any new place. But I would be open to suggestions or help as long as I come across suggestions as I continue my work where I always do.

First off, I love the choice you made to use the word "address" in this context. I find this metaphor immediately helpful for understanding the fatigue the idea of needing to find, and remember to visit, a new place brings up for you.

Now, can you please share some of the places where you are already working and, it sounds like, you might be open to seeing suggestions surfaced?

Hmmm... I think I am easily available at Wikipedia pages. Suggestion might be best offered to me as I edit articles if possible. --Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

Lastly, thank you very much for information on Structured Tasks and Edit Check. I didn’t know about them. I teach Wikipedia editing to newcomers; it’s good to learn they will be reminded to add a citation when add a large amount of text. I can show this in trainings. Structured tasks made me think about whether i can use it in creating “suggestion lists” for schools...

I'm glad to know you can see the value in/use for these two projects! Might there be a link to the sort of "suggestion lists" you're referring to here?

Please find a suggestion list (in Turkish) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HXYTRGB2KCFp_10oejyPqXr5LT4vFGtl/edit --Basak (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC) @PPelberg

...I'd love to share what you're thinking with @KStoller-WMF who leads one of the teams building out Structured Tasks.

Oh, and if there is guidance/documentation about Edit Check that you think would better equip you to help newcomers use this new functionality, I hope you will say as much! @Trizek (WMF) are beginning to think about how we might improve documentation. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 06:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I believe the issue is more about knowing about the features' existence than the documentation itself. When you know a feature's name, the documentation is then at reach.

@Basak, which channel(s) do you use to know which features are available for Wikipedia editing teachers?

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:32, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Trizek, I don't think I know many channels. I read WikiEdu bulletins, if I see something interesting I connect with related people to learn more; I follow presentations related to Education activities at Wikimedia events I attend and sometimes learn about features there.Basak (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Basak. We communicate about our features as much as we can, during community events or through publications on wiki, or on Diff. The Growth team has a specific newsletter, that gives updates on features that could be useful to anyone who cares about newcomers' first steps on Wikipedia. Please let me know if you have ideas of places where we could share our updates! :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:53, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

One point that has probably not been considered at the moment concerning having a personal Homepage is the fact that it would make it possible, for those who are interested, to get announcements of the latest software developments, or tips and advice on how to use them. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:52, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

• Для этого есть работы недели и марафоны, но непонятно, работают ли они для новых пользователей (а опытные пользователи уже втянулись и идеи, что делать, у них скорее есть). Lvova (talk) 21:47, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimmyjrg & @Lvova, thank you both for your comments about WikiProjects, events, and contests. Both of you mentioned that, although these opportunities exist, there are still many challenges that they face. They may have low engagement, or they may be unknown by many editors (so not very discoverable), or they may not always be the most intuitive and inviting spaces for newcomers. These issues can make people give up on them or not even start trying to engage with them at all. For these reasons, we’re interested in learning how we can support better experiences for collaboration on the wikis. So, here is my question for both of you: What do you think could make collaborative activities on the wikis (such as WikiProjects and/or events) more engaging and exciting? What is missing today that could help them bring on and retain more people as active participants? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  Now I try to suggest in my community to work a little bit more in one direction, for example, if we have CEE Spring or Asian Month, we can choose topics that will be about CEE/Asia in Thematic geographical weeks and Work of the week.

  Also, these activities have big barriers for newcomers, like 'at least 4000 bytes and 400 visible words'. Even when I with my 17 years and 3000+ written articles experience create something about the topic of the contest, I can not always reach this minimum (in the last Asian month I wrote 66 articles officially and didn't add to the list 48). But our Thematic geographical weeks ask to create at least 20! articles like that in a week! just for the barnstar (every week, because thematic weeks are going one by one -- see the current example). Also it is related to gender gap -- you may know that articles about women are usually smaller than articles about men, so less motivation to translate them (or create -- less sources as a whole).

  And technically people are motivated to do these things just by 'Wikipedias by size'. "Oh ok, English Wikipedia is larger, but we are better, because our notability rules and rules about Good/Featured articles/contests are much stricter". Lvova (talk) 09:36, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, thank you for sharing some of the barriers faced by newcomers (or anyone, reallyǃ) when working on collaborative activities on the wikis, such as the high expectations on what can be produced. Do you think it would be helpful if goals could be set that could be more personalized? For example, newcomers (or anyone who wants to do a smaller amount of work) could have a goal set that feels realistic and achievable -- and, when they do reach the goal, they can be recognized for that effort? IFried (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  I know an example like this: an event for newcomers, the rules are a little bit less strict. But it is a special event once a year. If to set different goals for newcomers and experienced users in, let's say, CEE Spring -- I'm not sure about the community's reaction (but the good example of equality is WLM). So from the point of view of a personal motivation it could be helpful (and healthier), but who knows from the point of view of the community. Lvova (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, thank you for the reply and for sharing this exampleǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  @IFried (WMF) I think for the WikiProjects to succeed they need someone (or a group) to adopt them. I was active on WikiProject_Australian_music but it was rare to find anyone else in the Talk/Discussion page, even though there were others clearly interested in the subject of Australian Music. Now, I rarely look at the Project page.

  I think a way to revive some of these would be to create events like in-person or online meetups where people interested in a subject can connect in real time, and then use the Project page to keep up to date other times and stay connected. This wouldn't mean that the meetup members own the Project, but that they'd be actively using it as a way to promote their work and ideally help newcomers too. It's often knowing that others see your work that is exciting or rewarding, and pushes further engagement as articles or content in general is improved.

  To make this work, it likely needs the local chapters to arrange a series of events around each Project and push to better support small groups. This means WMF should provide additional funding for chapters to pursue creating new meetups and groups, and this should be seperate from the current funding chapters apply for and receive. The intention should be to make editing Wikis a community activity where you can connect with people wherever you are located. This might mean specialty staff need to be hired by chapters, or new resources are created. Perhaps each chapter could look at their local WikiProjects and plan their year around monthly themed events targeted at the people likely to have an interest. I guess the chapters already do this, but without the push to get people using Projects as part of their editing. Jimmyjrg (talk) 13:48, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimmyjrg, thank you for this new commentǃ I love this ideaː "I think a way to revive some of these would be to create events like in-person or online meetups where people interested in a subject can connect in real time, and then use the Project page to keep up to date other times and stay connected." To me, this makes a lot of sense. Events provide a structured way for people to come together and work on things that they care about, along with connecting with other contributors and creating community. You bring up the importance of funding these initiatives, as well as nurturing collaboration between WikiProjects and affiliates/chapters. Another topic I would like to raise is the availability of tooling and resources to organize events effectively. I work on a team that has focused on building/improving tools for collaboration on the wikis, and we're currently thinking about how some of our tools (such as Event Registration) could perhaps become more generalized, so they could be used for WikiProject events (and then promoted via the Collaboration List). We have shared some of our research findings in this report, but we welcome any other ideas/comments you may have about the challenges faced by WikiProjects and how they can be better supported. Thank you again for your feedbackǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

• I guess this is mostly up to personal preference. You get more acquainted over time and when you become a member of new user groups, wiki projects or other wikis, you usually already know what work is there to be done and you can choose for yourself. The existing village stocks and similar pages do a good job of this if you want to get some general insight. --Jan Myšák (talk) 16:06, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for sharing this, @Jan Myšákǃ It is a great point that user groups and WikiProjects are a great way to discover backlogs of work. However, I wonder if they are sometimes not very discoverable to some people, or if perhaps some people are overwhelmed by the information at first and do not know where to start. So, here is my question for youː How discoverable and user-friendly do you see WikiProjects and user groups as being, especially for newcomers? Do you think there is anything we could do to make them more approachable to all users? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  @IFried (WMF) Hi, well that's a tough question. First of all, some general guidance is definitely beneficial, and I think the Growth team has this under control pretty well with tips for edits, the mentorship program, etc. As for projects and user groups, some could be more pronounced in order to spread awareness about them. However, not overwhelming users is a priority in my opinion so I would let the discovery be more of a gradual process that happens naturally. Even as I'm nearing 5 years of sysop work (Feb 20) I still come across features I haven't seen before or buttons I've never clicked, and that's part of what keeps me engaged and allows me to discover Wikimedia ať my own pace. Jan Myšák (talk) 07:45, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for sharing this perspective, @Jan Myšákǃ Great point about not overwhelming people with too much information all at once, and it's wonderful to know that you're still coming across new things to keep you engagedǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

We want to improve the experience of collaboration on the wikis, so it’s easier for contributors to find one another and work on projects together, whether it’s through backlog drives, edit-a-thons, WikiProjects, or even two editors working together. How do you think we could help more contributors find each other, connect, and work together?

• I think the Wikiprojects just need greater visability and encourage more use, especially around them establish project specific notability, and style guides. One size doesnt fit all especially around notability of minority or indigenous cultures which are heavily censored within colonial sources and used depreciated terms. Gnangarra (talk) 07:38, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  Agree. I don't think new contributors find their way easily to Project pages. But, despite having the WikiProject Australia page explicitly mentioned in the Twinkle "welcome to contributor to Australian content" message, I observe declining discussions in that project and very few new users appear there. I tend to avoid chiming in on a lot of discussions in those projects these days, as there's always someone being aggravating, pigheaded, etc in the discussion and I just can't handle that any more. Maybe the new users read the page first, see the tone, and decide not to engage. Those that do are usually seeking to get their first article to Good Article status, which is usually unrealistic. Finding reviewers for GA is nearly impossible and satisfying them is more than impossible, so why bother. I suspect we get new contributor burn-out from chasing GA status. There is so much fiction about how Wikipedia is supposed to work and my lived reality of it. Perhaps it's time to ditch some of the policies and processes that are fiction than aren't really adding value (no matter how "good" they sound) and replace them by some more honest advice (e.g. "don't bother with GA"). I think for new contributors it's still not obvious how to talk to another contributor; I think they want a more private channel so they can ask their possible dumb question in private than do so in public. I try to reach out to new contributors in my topic space who seem to be trying to do good things (I see them on my watchlist on the days I can bear to look at it) and try to send a genuine personal message of thanks, welcome, and how to contact me if they need advice or whatever (including an email address if they prefer that and they often do). Over the years, I have had some good working experiences with other Wikipedians on some larger projects, but sooner or later we took those interactions off-wiki (usually direct email and Google Drive to exchange material). Somehow doing it on wiki was either clunky (easier to upload a large number of draft articles to Google Drive than on-wiki, particularly if there are any copyright issues) or attracted randoms who wanted to tell us how it should be done but not contribute personally. I have far more respect for the opinions of those willing to do the work as they have to weigh up the balance of how much effort vs how much perfection to make a project feasible. (Back to the earlier discussion about prioritisation). My suspicion is that new people just aren't comfortable with the very public conversations on Wikipedia or the technology (although I think the new discussion format is better than the old Talk pages). I think people want/expect more of a social media style experience where they can follow or block others and have conversations among subsets of people they chose. Communication between contributors has never been a Wikipedia strong point. Kerry Raymond (talk) 06:39, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Gnangarra and @Kerry Raymond, thank you for all of the comments you have written so far about some of the challenges involved in collaboration on the wikis, especially around discoverability. We know that it can be hard for people to discover WikiProjects that interest them, which is a missed opportunity for community-building and support. As a starting point, we have recently launched the Collaboration List, which allows people to find WikiProjects on their home wiki (as well as a global list of events). So, we’re wondering: How can we improve the Collaboration List? And, generally speaking, how do you think we could make WikiProjects more discoverable and approachable to editors on the wikis?

  Additionally, another topic was brought up, which isː People don't always know how to engage with WikiProjects, or they don't always know what questions to ask/what help they can get. So, here's another questionː Do you think it would be helpful for people to get some optional structured guidance in how to engage with WikiProjects or how they can ask for help? What do you think people need to be able to effectively engage with WikiProjects overall? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

• If you're in Australia and editing Wikipedia, an occasional banner letting you know about WMAU and/or their events would be useful, especially for new and IP users who are unlikely to look at their Talk page. Usually I hate the banners, but a small prompt to let me know there's an event or group near my location could be useful for some. If not a banner, then a notification to say "Did you know there's Wiki events in your area?" and linking to the list of chapters might be useful. Something like that without being annoying... Or just pushing the chapters in all help pages too, so people looking for help know there's an option beside reading or watching a tutorial. --Jimmyjrg (talk) 20:58, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimmyjrg, thank you for this response! We have also been interested in exploring new ways for people to learn about events, and we have thought about the possibility of some sort of notification or subscription service. For example, people could opt in to receive notifications about upcoming events that may interest them. For example, "Notify me about new events that focus on adding content on the topic of ‘Biology’ on Spanish Wikipedia” or "Notify me about new events that focus on adding images to Commons"). We have created infrastructure through Event Registration in which we can ask organizers for structured data on their events (such asː What are the target wikis? What are the topics?), so this could be possible, if it would be valuable. If yes, what type of information would you want to know about events? And, if no, why not, and what would be a more useful way to discover events? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  we are losing/almost lost the art of on Project discussion and communication, to find out what is happening messages are spread across places like telegram, discord, threads, bluesky, while email has become a hositle environ where bad actors/former contributors get elevated volume that makes it the last place to send anyone, even staff avoid it now. This all contributes to our biggest issues disconnection from messages and dilution of beneficial audiences. Banners arent better because affiliates arent as welcomed to put notices in places like en:wp and commons, meta is an old structure that could do with a refresh its currently dominated by issues finding meetups isnt easy, and even the calander is lacking depth it show shows wikimania in August, but not any application deadlines, nor any of the multitude of other thermatic global regional events. Communication at all levels just lacks co-ordination to centralise activity. Gnangarra (talk) 06:03, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  @IFried (WMF)That would be great if I could get notifications of events related to topics I'm interested in or run by specific groups, all within Wikimedia. I agree with @Gnangarra, that banners are tightly controlled so if someone creates a project they often won't have enough lead-up time to promote it that way. If notifications can be used on-Wiki, then that might push more groups, affiliates, and chapters to promote their events on-Wiki too, and make it more unified and easier to find what's happening (and promote it). Sounds like a great idea. Jimmyjrg (talk) 13:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  That is great to hear, @Jimmyjrgǃ Thank you for the reply and the explanation of your thinking. Much appreciatedǃ IFried (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimmyjrg: May I ask what prevents you from requesting such a banner? CNR is open to everyone. File:VSN Training Banner campaigns, April 2022.pdf has a useful training for requesting banners, although a new one is going to be published soon by the WMF because of some changes in the guidelines. CNA are always willing to help. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 16:00, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

• В Википедии очень ценится анонимность, а это безопасность для каждого одного человека, а не для совместной работы. Я бы предложила больше ценить людей, использующих своё имя, для решения этой задачи, но до сих пор сообщество движется больше в ином направлении, и это тоже можно понять. Lvova (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Lvova, thank you for sharing this! While it is up to the individual whether or not they want to share their “real” name, there are perhaps other ways that people can communicate their identity and interests. For example, perhaps people could add certain structured information about themselves to their user pages. We have seen some recent wishes along this vein in the Community Wishlist Survey (see Standard-User-Page, User-Icons, and Make it easier for users to find others to help in collaborating on writing articles), which led to the focus area of Connecting Contributors. One potential tool that could also be of interest to you is Invitation Lists. It allows you (if you have the event organizer right) to find people who have made significant contributions to a list of articles, so you can reach out to them and invite them to a collaborative activity. So, as a follow-up question: Are there other ways (aside from people directly sharing their names) that you could see as effective methods of making the wikis feel more personable and inviting? Is there anything you wish you could learn about other editors, and why would this information be important to you? IFried (WMF) (talk) 23:26, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  It is a question like 'how technically create more trust between people'. I can easily find people who are interested in Saint-Petersburg, but with whom I absolutely don't want to work; people who are interested in feminism, but don't ready to work about it on Wikipedia because of the community's reaction; Wikipedians who are professionals in psychology, who also don't want to work in the area of their specialty on Wikipedia because the start articles are already too strange to change them easy enough to the best.

  Icons, userboxes -- they don't show what I DON'T want to see in another editor. It is even forbidden to write ideological/political views on your page in ruwiki, but it is the core for me. I need safety to work, not only common topic with someone, and no, I don't feel all the community as a safe place (yes, I know about T&S, but they can help only in rare situations). Lvova (talk) 09:17, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• By providing more funding for scholarships to Wikimania and other conferences, for one thing. Sdkb ^talk 20:35, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• By creating a new app that could function like a advanced dashboard. Most of people have mobiles but it is hard to edit directly on a mobile. An app as a tool for editing with a better accessibility could be very helpful. Let the community work together and propose widgets to have plenty of micro tools and advanced functions that people can use to ease the editing on mobile. This app could provide a space for people to store all the informations they gather (results of researches, books, articles) and associate to them keywords, snippets or short summaries. They can find easily and pick up the references later to edit the choosen content and include it in a wiki. The storage could be a shared one, where all editors can have an access to a base of selected sources where it is also noticed which content is relevant in it and if the source hase been used or not and where. This could allow to structure the work of edition and work in teams, in symbiosis. How ? There are plenty of people who have access to quality sources but no time to edit. They could be "donors of selected content" and skilled editors could edit faster if they still have a base of pre-selected content, as it takes often a long time to retrieve quality sources. There would also be a way to reward the work of searching good content which takes a lot of time and isn't taken in account by the wiki editing counter. Waltercolor (talk) 09:17, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Reading/Learning

The wikis load faster or slower depending on where in the world people live. Are there any parts of the world where you think that improved performance is most needed?

• Even in Europe there are sometimes problems with tools on the cloud services as they do not have any regional caches. --GPSLeo (talk) 09:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the feedback! I will relay this to the team. SSapaty (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hi Leo, can you provide a bit more details on this issue? Example, name of tool and the amount of lag you are seeing? SSapaty (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

How can we help new generations of readers find Wikipedia content interesting and engaging?

We’ve discussed ideas around interactive content and video in the past, and in the current year have focused on charts and on experimenting with new ways to surface existing Wikipedia content.

• Wikipedia needs to reflect the world of the reader. But the Notability requirements for some topics are often quite restrictive to the point that certain countries and their people can't possibly be properly represented, or at least not represented in as much detail as others who live in countries that better document them. Ideally, creating some sort of local notability nuance after discussion with local communities and chapters could allow better representation and make Wikipedia more appealing to read for new generations.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 21:14, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• I agree with the above. Active editors should be encouraged to be open-minded to allow contributions on topics not only about other countries but also niche topics not covered by mainstream media or typical sources of information used at Wikipedia. We should find a way to ensure that notability criteria are used for providing high-quality content not for excluding certain topics and perspectives. Otherwise, wikipedia can no be a source of knowledge for new generations of readers searching for information.

Secondly, more friendly language is needed on the notice and warning boxes, talk message boxes. I believe that would encourage more friendly language on talk pages and discussion pages and support the new generation of readers to become more active readers.Basak (talk) 09:05, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback @Basak. I'm Olga, a product manager that works with the reader side of things at the WMF and I just wanted to note that your comment on friendly/accessible language is close to something we've been thinking about recently. Over the last few years, we've been seeing a lot of feedback from readers on the complexity of the language in articles, and have begun to try to work towards ideas on simplifying things from that perspective (for example, right now we're running some experiments that try to summarize existing articles using more simple language - so far, people seem to find these really useful). I like the idea of expanding that into the content as well - especially in terms of being able to provide more junior editors with the opportunity to define notability from a local or cultural context. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 11:59, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

• Это тот вопрос, который должны решать читатели, а активные редакторы должны принять возможные изменения. Пока что скорее верна (придуманная не мной, но я согласна) идея, что Википедия пишется редакторами для редакторов. Lvova (talk) 21:55, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
• As a small step, better use of images by increasing the default size of them. I would like for editors to be able to temporary ask questions from readers for one specific article, such as "Do you understand this paragraph". "Is there anything missing". I suspect a lot of our technical articles will prove to be too difficult for good engagement. Femke (talk) 22:13, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

How might we continue on this track to use our existing content in new ways that are unique to Wikimedia?

• move outside the GLAM/Education networks for access to more content, look at recording oral histories. Seek out photo collaborations with secondhand & antique dealers to get the more average person connection and knowledge. The more we connect in unique but respectful ways to average Joe the more accessuble we become. Theres a whole world of practical knowledge which we dont collect Gnangarra (talk) 07:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  Since our content is CC-BY-SA licensed, there are no new ways to reuse it that are unique to Wikimedia UNLESS we realease this "new way" content under a more restricted licence. Anything clever we do can be directly copied and reused. What often hold us back even in plain old article-writing is the inability to include something for copyright reasons. Since I understand we have a partnership with Google to get access to our feed of new content, could we ask them for permission to use screenshots from Google Streetview to illustrate our articles in return. I'd love to use a current colour photo of a main street, school, or church rather than a black-and-white blurry one that is pre-1955 (and hence public domain in Australia). I write about Queensland which is about 2000 km long, so going out and taking my own photos isn't possible beyond my local area, so many articles about Queensland places have no photo or just a blurry black-and-white one of a local family (hardly a depiction of the place). It seems crazy that any AI can reuse anything it wants without any apparent regard for copyright while we can't. Kerry Raymond (talk) 06:52, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• If I search for something on English Wikipedia and there isn't an article for it, there should be the option to see results from other language Wikipedia's. Maybe it exists on French Wikipedia and the english name is on Wikidata thanks to the French article. Perhaps using Wikidata to find suggested pages, and then it could even suggest a translation be made.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 21:03, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  That's a good idea @Jimmyjrg! We've (the Web team at the WMF) have recently been discussing ways we can make it so that red links feel a little less like a dead end for readers. Access to articles from other languages has been one of the ideas that has been brought up so far. Another idea we've recently discussed is to add recommendations to similar pages once you click on a red link (For example - if the page for Ostrich egg (right now available on only 9 languages) is not available in your language, perhaps we can have a suggestion for the page on Ostrict (available in 51 languages), since it's probably likely there will be some information relevant to you there). What do you think of this suggestion? Also curious if you have more ideas in this area. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 12:05, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  @OVasileva (WMF) That sounds like a good idea. I was thinking more about search than red links, so right now if you search "Ostrich egg" and there's no article it would show articles that include that word, which usually are helpful. It looks like it also searches sister projects like Wikisource (For example Warsaw Conservatorium), so maybe this is where the other language articles could appear too.

  At the moment if I click on a red link on Wikipedia while logged in, it takes me to a page to create that article. It's only if I'm not logged in that I'd see a message (like this) about searching Wikipedia or sister projects. I'm not sure if that's the same for everyone, or if I changed a setting to skip that page?

  But if you could make the red link pages display useful information such as alternative articles or articles in other languages, that would be great too. Maybe a summary of the subject taken from Wikidata could also be included before suggesting alternatives? Having links to an existing article in other languages could also motivate someone interested to sign up and translate it. Jimmyjrg (talk) 15:48, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  I like your search idea as well! I think our designer @JScherer-WMF had actually done some exploration around displaying articles from different languages in search - he might be able to show some of the ideas we'd discussed. We're actually doing a somewhat related experiment on search right now which is to show related pages once you click into search in the cases where you might not specifically know what to search or, or want to just browse. From there, showing related or similar pages as suggestions if there's no results should be pretty straightforward - we can look into it! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

• Some projects adjust the menu for editors but not for readers, leading to inconsistencies in navigation. To improve accessibility for both newcomers and experienced users, I propose a standardized menu layout:

Main Page, Portals, Random Article, About Wikipedia

Help, How to Write an Article, Community, Recent Changes, Village Pump, Contact, Donations

This suggestion is based on a recent discussion on ro:Wikipedia:Cafenea/Arhivă/2025/ianuarie#Propunere:_Optimizarea_meniului_de_navigare Romanian Wikipedia. GoldRoger487 (talk) 06:34, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Moderators

What might need to change about Wikipedia in order for more people to want to get involved in advanced volunteer roles, like patrollers or administrators?

• trust is the key, nothing cant fixed/reverted but we should back away from the gaulent running abuse weilding systems of the current RFA processes, simplify the processes - why do you want it the bits, have you been in any conflicts- then vote yes, no , maybe Gnangarra (talk) 08:02, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  As a woman and active contributor, I've often been asked about becoming an admin or other roles because we need more of them (don't disagree) and we need more women in these roles (the rationale for this is less clear to me, seems to be more about box ticking). And I say NO. This is partly because I happen to think I am quite good at writing content and I enjoy writing content (I had a working life of researching, writing, and citing, so it comes naturally). But with over a quarter of million edits, I can imagine what an RFA would be like. Anything I ever did wrong or said wrong could be dragged up and turned into a major drama. I've been on-wiki for so many years I probably can't even remember most of my edits and interactions. I think the likely outcome is that I would drop out of Wikipedia in disgust. I think unless the RFA process is significantly reformed, I wouldn't recommend anyone undertake it. Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:03, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  This sounds like a pretty big issue, but RFA is fundamentally a community process. These questions are asked in the context of the WMF annual plan: I wonder what role (if any) could the foundation play in changing it? JSherman (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• Abuse and harassment need to be properly tackled. Every editor is a person who deserves to be treated fairly, and while there's some cases of people being misunderstood as being rude when it wasn't intended, there's also people who are just horrible.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  Moderator tools person here: it sounds like the problem you are stating is that editors are leaving due to improper abuse handling before they advance beyond editing. Could you provide some more detail about what aspect of abuse and harassment handling need change? Eg. is it too difficult to report, is there a lack of followup on reports, does it just seem like the volume of abuse is so high that it has a chilling effect? This sounds like a Trust and Safety issue (T&S handles abuse reports), but these two areas have a lot of overlap. JSherman (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• Before you can ask editors to take on advanced roles within a project, you need to encourage people to be good collaborators. This is what will ensure that these people are there. There is no point in trying to get more editors to collaborate on Wikimedia projects when the environment is hostile, especially for minorities. What image do you want to convey to the public when the project is attacked abroad for investing in minorities? It is high time to nip this problem in the bud. .J. ^tlk 04:07, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  It sounds like you are talking about two different problems: a hostile community and attacks from abroad. Am I understanding correctly? Could provide a little more information to clarify? JSherman (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Wikipedia has been facing external attacks, I don't think I need to explain much. Much of this is due to the fact that the project invests in diversity, something that has been rejected by certain governments. However, within the project, contributors do not feel motivated to collaborate because they find it a hostile environment. Recently, there was an incident involving transphobia on the part of an administrator. How can we refute critics who want to undermine Wikipedia's reputation when the platform itself does not collaborate? .J. ^tlk 21:34, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for clarifying. I can see how a generally hostile or transphobic environment would impact people getting involved as patrollers or admins. I still don't understand the second point as it relates to the question about what changes we should consider while making our upcoming annual plan. Are saying that fixing this would reduce the rate at which we are attacked by governments or discredited by critics, and that more people would then want to get involved in advanced volunteer roles, beyond the direct impact of addressing the hostile environment? JSherman (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

  The point I'm trying to make is that we need to stop abuse on Wikimedia projects. There are a significant number of editors who give up editing because people on the moderation team attack editors. External attacks, from controversial personalities or public figures, will always happen, but they cannot happen within the platform itself. .J. ^tlk 14:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for clarifying! JSherman (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

What information or context about edits or users could help you make patrolling or admin decisions more quickly or easily?

• An integrated translation feature for text in diffs (including the edit comments) would help in many cases on multilingual projects. --GPSLeo (talk) 09:13, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

  Moderator tool person here: I'm just thinking this through. It sounds like there is a need for additional support patrolling edits in another language. I'm wondering if it would be useful to provide side by side translations of two edits instead of a showing a translated diff?

  There are existing services for translation of revisions (eg. edits), but I'm not aware of any for the diffs. I believe translating diffs would be much more error prone than translating revisions because of the loose coupling between the +- change and the semantic change. I'd defer to machine learning research folks on that though. JSherman (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• Я точно мало доверяю при патрулировании изменениям любых цифр; хотя патрулирование -- не выверка, это всё же явная проблема. Известно, что патрулирующие легко могут просмотреть изменения от проверенной версии до проверенной версии; но было бы круто, если бы при просмотре разницы были видны, например, только изменения от участников без флага (только они и все за раз при этом), если бы инструмент умел бы не показывать механические правки типа нажатия викификатора. Администраторские решения -- прямо сейчас горячая проблема в русскоязычном разделе, потому что участники боятся власти администраторов, но участники же забалтывают итоги, и решения невозможно принять волевым образом; в итоге становятся невозможны какие-либо изменения. Lvova (talk) 21:59, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Moderator tool person here: Note that I used machine translation (which did not do a perfect job) to read your comment. It sounds like you are asking for the kind of filtering that is present in Special:RecentChanges. Are you asking for this kind of filtering in the article revision history view or perhaps somewhere else? If I am misunderstanding, please clarify. Thanks for your feedback. JSherman (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

• I am on the opinion that explaining features to it's users is the first part. That way, more users use it correctly and the admin/patroller does not need to do much. I'd prefer using patrolling tools primarily for the guys that intend to use features in the wrong way and against community policies, rather than using patrolling tools on anyone that uses it wrongly.
• Getting the similar users feature back on track would be nice, it was removed from the "Trust and Safety"'s team planned features. Speaking about guys that intend to do bad things, that would be used on guys that are long term abusers, who also make threats of bodily harm and defamatory threats. They also go between IP's frequently, which is where the "similar users" feature comes in. These long term abusers are never welcome. So, yes, of course I want them to feel as discouraged as humanly possible.--Snævar (talk) 10:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Since there is no section under editing for making extensions and mediawiki better, I will place this here on the grounds on my first comment. I think ContentTranslate has too many errors in it's programming. I am spotting a bug almost every time I use this thing. ContentTranslate's team really does need an code tester, and editors are not volunteer testers. Editors only make bug reports because their editing workflow pushes towards that. The web team has one and the editing team, so why not them?--Snævar (talk) 10:10, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• On the Czech Wikipedia in particular, we've had great results with recruiting people into positions such as sysops and RC patrol work by contacting them personally, online or at various events. Active editors can often be competent yet lack the confidence to run for a position they would be adept in. --Jan Myšák (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

External Trends

What are the most important changes you’re noticing in the world outside Wikimedia? These might be trends in technology, education, or how people learn.

• video, and the use of video tutorials for learning. 3D visuals. Lack of support for open source formats in these areas Gnangarra (talk) 14:05, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  Using Zoom (or similar) for training. While this might not be true for all languages, we have English language speakers in all time zones. WMF, chapters, and user groups could colletively online hands-on training in a range of time slots across the days/times so there are time slots that suit everyone wanting to learn to contribute. Make undertaking such training the entry point for new Wikipedians (not just having an IP address). Maybe leave a way to do very minor edits without training via an IP address (e.g. typos) but rate limit those IP edits to prevent abuse. I have done a lot of hands-on training via Zoom in Australia (often one-on-one) and it seems quite effective and gives the new user person contact with an experienced contributor (I note their follow-up conversations usually occur via email, see my previous comments about Wikipedia communication style). Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• It gets more and more complicated and long to get a correct content about a subject when asking Google. A lot of commercial sites appear in the list but not the valuable secondary sources we need for Wikipedia. These contents exist, but only surface after a couple of hours or days of research, asking always for the same word or sentence. Is there a way to get a special track of search for wikimedians with an algorithm that privilegiates the kind of material we need ? Waltercolor (talk) 16:32, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Government interference in access to information. We all know about the limits being put on Wikipedia and/or Wikimedia projects by governments because we widely talk about them. But supposedly liberal Western governments are also limiting access to basics such as news sites. I live with that on a daily basis here in Canada, where there are government-imposed access restrictions. Risker (talk) 01:17, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for sharing this, @Risker – can you say more about what kinds of news restrictions you're noticing in Canada? I'm lightly familiar with the ban on sharing news content on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) due to the dispute over the Online News Act. Is this what you're referring to, or something else? MPinchuk (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hi MPinchuk (WMF). The Online News Act is definitely part of it, but the feeds have become so changed because of it that many solid news sources that we routinely were shown by browsers are almost impossible to find. Without a direct link to a NYT or Washington Post article, it will almost never show up in a Canadian feed, regardless of the browser. European sources? Haven't seen one come up in results in over a year. Not even when using a VPN do these things show up; of course, browsers can often see through them. This only happened after the ONA was passed. Risker (talk) 23:17, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Outside of the Wikimedia movement, what other online communities do you participate in? What lessons can we take away from tools and processes on other community platforms?

• Из скорее релевантного Zooniverse - отличный пример того, как можно было бы, скажем, делать GLAM-проекты. Lvova (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

  Спасибо @Lvova!

  По вашему мнению, какие элементы Zooniverse кажутся наиболее важными? В чем оно преуспевает, в чем не преуспевает Wikimedia GLAM?

  (Quick translation for non-Russian speakers: Lvova mentioned Zooniverse as a community platform we could learn from, specifically w/r/t GLAM, and I'm asking for more info on what it is doing well & what elements we could learn from. Other Zooniverse users, please feel free to chime in, too!) MPinchuk (WMF) (talk) 15:15, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

  В них лучше реализована геймификация, виден прогресс выполнения работы (и каждый отдельный проект конечен), для каждого отдельного вида задачи есть простое обучение, в случае ошибки срабатывает факт демонстрации каждого примера заданному числу пользователей, поэтому ниже порог вхождения для тех, кто боится ошибиться. Тем временем, они решают конкретные научные задачи (в контексте того, что могло бы быть в Викимедиа -- учат ИИ, в контексте Викитеки и Викисклада -- оцифровывают каталоги с рукописными до этого указателями). Lvova (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

How are you using AI tools inside and outside your Wikimedia work?

• not using AI Gnangarra (talk) 14:07, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  If I am searching for a citation for uncited content I find in a Wikipedia article, I ask the question in Chrome and let Google AI suggest some answers. I look at the link(s) it provides and if any of them really are a usable citation to a reliable-ish source, then I use them. Often they are just links to material with similar key words but not providing a citaton for the uncited fact in question. So, use AI tools BUT you must get shown the source and you must satisfy yourself that it is a source for the fact and one that is reliable-enough. Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:14, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• ИИ отлично справляется с тем, чтобы помогать учить иностранные языки, придумывать то, что потом можно сделать заголовком к новости на мете, иногда у ChatGPT неплохо получается составить запрос для query.wikidata.org (но, увы, он не помогает победить регулярные выражения в AWB). Lvova (talk) 22:06, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

What do you find AI useful for?

• Хочется верить, что многие проблемы Викисклада можно было бы решить с помощью текстового поиска с помощью обученного ИИ. Lvova (talk) 22:06, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
• AI should be confined to "back-end tasks" like copyright checking, citation checks, spam, vandalism, some of those admin tasks that carry extensive backlogs where a simnple duck test is enough. Perhaps even offering a reading service for articles imagine being able to drive and listen to new changes made to articles of interest or for a longer journey have read all the articles from a category related to your destination. Any AI should not be creating articles, or media files lets keep our content exclusively in the domain of contributors. What ever the AI system they suck huge anounts of energy and create significant waste any expansion must be mindful of that footprint too, its better to address before we become dependent on it. Gnangarra (talk) 12:16, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

What pitfalls or problems are you encountering

• Very US centric when it comes to the english and responses to questions. Gnangarra (talk) 14:07, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Commons

What decisions can we make with the Commons community to create a sustainable project that supports creating encyclopedic knowledge?

• like to see wider use of video, and with that the ability to host media in the original file formats. Photography and editing software advances in leaps and bounds every year being able to upload the source format so others can edit from the original especially in the future would be great, otherwise every edit loses some part of the original. Gnangarra (talk) 14:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
• Commons app make an Iphone version, and allow short video uploads. Gnangarra (talk) 14:14, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

• Needs some clarification by what you mean by not sustainable (beyond limiting video to keep costs under control). Commons would point out that it supports non encyclopaedic projects like Wiktionary and Wikivoyage.Geni (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Geni, "sustainable" it is to be intended as something that continues to create positive impact, by using effectively the resources that are being deployed. And yes, you're right to underline that Commons supports also all other Wikimedia projects, although we didn't want to downplay that in our question. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

• I would like to see better tools (apps) for uploads from iPhone. I find it very difficult to do with the standard tools, but lacking a way to transfer my photos to my laptop, it means I have thousands of own-work photos on my phone intended for Commons but no way to upload them. What I would like is a two-step process. Have one tool that would let me bulk upload the photos from my phone onto Commons into a "Holding yard" area (perhaps only visible to me), which I could then take through the normal process of uploading (permissions, titles, Wikidata descriptions, categories, etc) via the usual interface on my laptop, which would remove from from the holding yard as part of the process. I'd be happy if the "holding yard" had limits (time, space) to avoid it becoming a vast space-waster. But allowing upload of the images and the describing of the images to be separate processes run on different devices would make a HUGE difference to me and to the articles I want to use the images in. Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
• Commons is the project that will be the source and storage point for any major upgrade of visual elements across the movement. Those upgrades are going to be necessary if we are able to continue to deliver free knowledge in formats that the majority of readers prefer. Its not something we should be leaving to like of google and AI platforms to deliver because they will always carry other agendas. Commons needs a support team with greater focus on future needs that comes only through a concious decision of the WMF to place resources into these efforts long term. We will need AI tools to spot AI, copyright violations, in video issues, and many more as each project explores it own world of capabilities. Gnangarra (talk) 06:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• as an archive of media files being able to upload raw images "behind" the processed jpg files to allow for future improvements of editing technology or even an adaption to 3d modeling with the best available information we have collected now will be valuable. Gnangarra (talk) 06:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
• Commons should be much more curated and cleaned, IMHO. Importing millions of images from other platforms as long as they have a suitable license, will not help unless these images are filtered (before uploading and thereafter) and categorized properly. We have tons of uncategorized, unusable, low quality etc. stuff, get rid of those images. SDC has failed IMHO, maybe AI can help to localize and categorize images automatically (or with wide automatic support). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:07, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• When doing recently a research on Commons for a presentation about cybersexism, I was not surprised that a lot of content on Commons is porn, easily accessible with very common keywords like "human" or "femmes". There are also graphic vector "creations" that are clearly offending for women, have no encyclopedic value and stay here since a long time. On another hand, Commons community is extremely severe with, for example, drawings of portraits for illustrating bios, overselling a potential risk of copyvio, even claiming that a whole series of photographies of the same person, done by different photographers, have been all violated separately by one and unique synthetic drawn portrait. Guess why, the person always look the same on all pictures and there is no originality in the photos that could justify a copyright. This raises the problem about the capacity of Commons for being a good resource for educational purposes (there is too much porn content which is not moderated and is not encyclopedic) and too severe rules concerning educational and informative drawings. Waltercolor (talk) 16:49, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata

How would you like to see Wikidata evolve in the future? How can it be most useful for building trustworthy encyclopedic content?

• Wikidata needs to be more dynamic in the language usage, so many terms being used are being forced to fit one generic definition and we are causing the loss the uniqueness of the english language, and it various dialects. Chips, French fries, crisps all over lap but they hold culturally different meanings across the globe. Wikidata needs to do more than hold alias' say everything equals this, its the AI systems drawing from us that are destroying the beauty of cultural nuiances. Gnangarra (talk) 14:22, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  Agree. Sometimes it is often very hard to find the wikidata name for something because it is not an intuitive name for Australian English speaker. So you create a new wikidata entry and then you get bawled out for doing it. Welcome to Wikidata. I would also like to see some better control over the use of MixNMatch. I've participated in some and it is very easy to just go along with its suggestions without checking thoroughly (i.e. an unmanagad AI risk). However, I often find incorrect data in Wikidata which appears to have arisen from MixNMatch. For example, a creek in NSW and a creek in QLD were mapped onto the same wikidata entry, with a Commons category for one of them and coords for the other and so on. There has been far too much bulk uploading with too little care. There has been far too much use of data sources that are unreliable. In particular, the GEO database used in the bot-generated entries in Swedish and Cebu Wikipedias is the source of a lot of errors in Wikidata that seep through into other Wikipedias. I think Wikidata needs more of a focus on quality than quantity. Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:34, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  One very specific issue is the way that English Wikipedia reports an error if the Commons category added to the article does not match the one in Wikidata. This includes the situation when there is no commons category in Wikidata at all. How can it be an error to add the Commons category to a Wikipedia article for the first time?! New users think they have done something wrong and remove the Commons category from article. If there is no commons category in Wikidata, it should copy it from the Wikipedia article NOT assert tht it is the only source of truth about Commons categories. Reported but never fixed. Having said that, I have never worked out where to report Wikidata problems, which is another part of the problem. Kerry Raymond (talk) 07:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Kerry Raymond,

  The fact that it is considered an error that a Wikipedia article has a Commons category listed but the Wikidata Item does not is determined by a Lua module on English Wikipedia. I would argue this is correct because the Wikidata Item should be updated but if the English Wikipedia community decided to change that then it would need to be changed there.

  In general if you are having a Wikidata issue then you're always welcome to reach out to the editors on d:Wikidata:Project chat, the development team at d:Wikidata:Report a technical problem or me directly. We can then direct you to the best place for a particular problem if needed. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:35, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• Find a way to turn wikispecies into a wikidata interface and merge the two projects.Geni (talk) 21:20, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

• poke around with how practical it will be to import the Gaia DR5 into wikidata in 2031.Geni (talk)
  • Hi @Geni, Given the size of this dataset this is not feasible. We have been and are working hard to ensure that the data in Wikidata is useful and queryable. With increasing size this becomes harder and harder. Instead we are focusing on building out the Wikibase Ecosystem in order to enable more people and organizations to publish their data as linked open data and make it accessible. This in turn allows Wikidata to focus on a base set of important and useful data, in a similar way as Wikipedia does not contain everything but covers a large amount of topics and provides you links to more information. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:39, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• I'd like to see every ISBN imported, similar to openlibrary, but with better linking to all the other data already in WD (authors, publishers, etc.). Currently there's three large databases collecting ISBN's and they all have different content, are each incomplete, and some aren't open. It could start as a partnership with one library service, and grow from there.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

• I fear that WD will not scale properly. As the number of items increases, sparql queries with a lot of matches more and more tend to timeout. Double the overall number of items, and most queries might fail. WD was now split into two instances, but this does not help in the long run. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• there are modelling issues. As long as there are no stringent modelling guidelines for various cases (and we as a community widely try to enforce those guidelines with suitable tools), sparql queries are difficult to impossible to craft. At the moment I feel that queries will get you all the stuff, you anticipate the modelling of, but not those, that do not match your expectations (e.g. modelling sources and mouth of a river can be quite different). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Herzi Pinki Yes! We have been on this topic for quite some time. You can find for example d:Wikidata talk:Ontology issues prioritization which identifies inconsistent modelling as one important issue. We have worked on EntitySchemas as one way to address this. The basis there now is in place but we still need to integrate it more in the user interface. In addition we will work to improve constraint violations this year, which will also help towards more consistent modelling. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• there needs to be more caring for the wild grown structures. Currently we have https://w.wiki/CsUC > 8000 subtypes of Buildings. Nobody can get the selection of the correct building type right. We need far more abstraction. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• duplicates are an issue. There needs to be much more infrastructural support to detect and avoid the creation of duplicates. E.g. I stumbled across a lot of duplicate mountain items at the border, created twofold for neighbouring countries, with different local names. There you can merge duplicates only if you compare location information across borders. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Setting up 1:1 relations, 1:n relations etc. should be done as a single step operation from the user's point of view. (e.g. the inverse properties part of (P361) & has part(s) (P527) or follows (P155) & followed by (P156) can always be maintained automatically - adding, deleting, changing in a single step). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• WD User interface is a bit clumsy. The main focus in WD is on automatic item manipulation (bots, quickstatement, tools), user experience when changing items manually (and in large numbers) could be improved. --Herzi Pinki (talk)
• We need to consider the wikiversum as a single data set and try as much as possible to check & enforce consistencies between e.g. WP, Commons and wikidata. There is to much of an not invented here attitude among users. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• SDC has failed, IMHO. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
• Wikidata needs to be editable on a mobile phone. --Arcstur (talk) 13:06, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Arcstur,

  We are working on prototypes now for this. If you'd be interested in testing them at some point please let me know. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:45, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Lydia Pintscher (WMDE), those are great news! Yes, I would love to test. Arcstur (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

  Great! We'll reach out to you when we have something ready to test. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 17:58, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

WD needs AI or templates for basics

I would expect more stuff to have smart algorithms and/or AI in the future.

As a more specific note: at the very least, the description of an entity should be built from its data. Each class, like a "school", defines important properties that any school should have. That's great, but why do I even need to fill in the description, and in 3 languages or more? It should be fairly easy to add templates. For example, for a person, the description should be: "{what one does}, born {year}". The community could define that, or AI could build it based on which properties are important. Note that a good description is important because, as far as I know, it is shown for autocomplete on Wikipedia.

Also, note that Abstract Wikipedia was a concept that wanted to create whole articles from Wikidata. Why don't we start with short descriptions on Wikidata first and see how it goes?

There is also a lot of boilerplate when creating entities. I need to fill in basic data even if it's already on Wikipedia in an infobox. Sure, there are some tools that kind of help copy that, but wouldn't it be nice if there were an AI that does most of the tedious stuff? Here's an example flow:

1. You create an entity for Mark Williams (the form only starts with language and label, no description yet).
2. AI suggests articles based on the initial label and your language.
3. You choose an article (or add a different one).
4. AI suggests data from the infobox or even from the article.
5. You accept properties that make sense.
6. AI suggests a template for the description (or asks you to review the template for the P31 given).
7. You accept or adjust the description.

It's basically "just" autocomplete on steroids, but it could be very powerful. It would definitely help me a lot in creating good entities on Wikidata. Nux (talk) 23:54, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Nux

We have worked on what you are envisioning with EntitySchemas. We have improved them over the past year. They are still not integrated properly in the user interface to enable what you envision but they build the foundation of it. We will continue working on that in addition to improving constraint violations that give similar guidance.

About the descriptions: We are exploring something called automated descriptions together with the Abstract Wikipedia team, to address pretty much the issue you identified. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:50, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with the points Nux made above.

For me, the main problem with Wikidata at the moment is that if you want to edit effectively and reasonably quickly, you need to be highly competent in technical skills such as coding, database ontology, etc. If you have these skills, you can leverage powerful tools like OpenRefine and SPARQL queries. If not, you're limited to manual editing or semi-automatic tools like various scripts.

Over the past few months, I’ve been testing how AI can assist a Wikidata editor, using my own private ChatGPT paid subscription. The possibilities are enormous, even at this early stage of the AI boom. It can already help you create code for SPARQL queries and QuickStatements editing sessions. It can assist in writing labels and descriptions for items in various languages. And if you connect it to Wikidata via API, the results are even better. However, as far as I know, Wikimedia does not currently provide any AI access for editors (though it could adopt similar verification mechanisms to those used by the Wikipedia Library for accessing scientific article collections). At the moment, users need to rely on their own accounts for various AI models, and the most effective ones typically require a paid subscription.

We also urgently need to integrate AI into some of our most popular editing tools, like Mix'n'Match and HarvestTemplates, as their current technology, based on old-school data parsing methods, is far from efficient. Powerek38 (talk) 14:00, 22 January 2025 (UTC)