Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Mentor list/Archive 1

Archive 1

Mentors who are not auto-assigned

Hi Xaosflux -- I saw that you signed up to be a mentor but then removed yourself, not wanting to be auto-assigned to newcomers. What did you have in mind for your participation? One thing that is available is to be listed as a mentor that is not auto-assigned, but can proactively "claim" mentees, meaning that they swap themselves out from the default mentor for that user. You can see how this works here, at the last heading on the page. This feature exists because of workshops and events -- the leader/trainer in the event might want all the students to be their mentee, but they don't also want to be receiving random other mentees. Therefore, they enter all the usernames of their event attendees at Special:ClaimMentee. How does this sound? I'm also interested in any other thoughts you have on the Growth features. Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): I was looking in to some possible bugs to create phab tickets, but reported over at mediawikiwiki already. I mostly deal with the technical side of things and didn't want to get swept in to the new user auto-assingment system. enwiki hosts a LOT of edit-a-thon type events, who may have use for that feature though. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I hope that this special workflow isn't actually dependent on a live properties on wikidata that can be altered by anyone and could break the entire system if updated in error or to purposefully disrupt things? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:09, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Xaosflux, thanks for asking! No, of course it's not dependent on the Wikidata item. The Wikidata item exists – more or less – only for easier tracking of the lists at multiple wikis. As of now, only the system administrators can change the actual page that's used for the list by changing the configuration variables in the server configuration. We, however, plan to change this (so Growth stops being a blocker for the community to move lists somewhere else, as part of project pages reorganization) with the Community configuration project. Right now, we're testing this at the four pilot wikis to make sure it works as intended. Once Community configuration is available to English Wikipedia, any administrator would be able to change the mentor list via special:EditGrowthConfig. If you're interested in trying this feature out, you can do it at testwiki:Special:EditGrowthConfig. Let me know if you have any questions! --Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Martin Urbanec (WMF): thanks for the update, Special:EditGrowthConfig looks rather well thought out! — xaosflux ^Talk 22:42, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm happy to hear that! Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 07:43, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Results from 2% test

Hello mentors! Thank you for signing up and answering questions from newcomers over the past month. I've just now posted results and statistics from the initial test of Growth features on English Wikipedia, and I encourage you all to check them out and join the discussion. In particular, it would be really helpful if you could reply on that thread speaking to these things:

• Any reflections you have on the mentorship experience.
• The types and quality of questions you received.
• How often you received replies from mentees.
• How many questions you would be comfortable receiving going forward.

Thank you for helping us figure out the next steps on this project. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

User testing mentor dashboard

Hello mentors! As I've mentioned a few times on the talk page for the Growth features, the biggest improvement we've been working on for mentorship is the "mentor dashboard". Some form of this has been requested by many communities with the Growth features: the question of whether it's possible for mentors to see their mentees and how they're doing.

We've been designing and building a first version with input from several language communities (you can see a screenshot of the current state at right), and we've now in the phase of development where we want to live test it with some actual mentors from the wikis. We'll be testing with mentors from several languages, and we're looking for two English Wikipedia mentors to weigh in. This would be a 45-minute Google Meet with me and the designer for the feature, in which you'll click through it and speak about your opinions. We'll want to record your screen and audio so that we can take notes later on (and we'll ask you to sign a release for us to record you).

Screen shot of mentor dashboard in development

If you're interested, please reply, and we'll send you a wiki email to get started. @Sdkb, @Elli, @Bilorv -- I remember you expressing some thoughts about the mentor dashboard in other discussions. Are you interested? Let me know! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): sure, I'd be glad to help. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bit too busy with real life things to join in with this, but I appreciate the ping. — Bilorv (talk) 16:18, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, Elli and Bilorv. We're looking to get one more user test from English Wikipedia, so I just wanted to ping a few more mentors to see if anyone has the time and is interested. Let me know! @Sdkb, @Nosebagbear, @Em-mustapha, @Wugapodes, @Calliopejen1. Thank you! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF) Thanks for thinking of us, I would be delighted to help. Thanks. —The Living love ^talk 19:53, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Bot grooming

I'm requesting a bot to help groom this page, please put any comments at: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Bot_to_groom_the_Mentor_list. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:54, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Results from 5% test

Hello mentors! Thank you for signing up and answering questions from newcomers as part of a test of the Growth features. Since September 20, Growth features have been given to 25% of new accounts, and the mentorship aspect was given to only 5% (because we have more questions and challenges around scaling up mentorship). I've just now posted results and statistics from this most recent test of Growth features on English Wikipedia, and I encourage you all to check them out and join the discussion. In particular, it would be really helpful if you could reply on that thread speaking to these things:

• Any reflections you have on the mentorship experience.
• The types and quality of questions you received.
• How often you received replies from mentees.
• How many questions you would be comfortable receiving going forward.
• Ideas you have about how to improve the way mentorship works.

Thank you for helping us figure out the next steps on this project! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Mentor dashboard coming soon to your wiki

Hello!

Starting tomorrow (December 7), you will have access to Special:MentorDashboard.

This special page will list the newcomers who are assigned to you so that you can check if they do some edits or if the need help. This tool is still a work in progress. Some bugs may appear, please let me know if you find something strange.

Also, a new filter will be available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors

In the future, we will add more functions to this Mentor page.

Please ping me if you have questions! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF), Mentor Dashboard is apparently accessible only when you are in the mentor list. However, when I remove myself from the list, my mentees don't get unassigned or reassigned. One of them needs to be fixed, I would say. If I am expected to still guide all the mentees I was assigned while I was on the list, I should have access to the dashboard. If I am not expected to that, the programme should stop showing me as their mentor. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Usedtobecool and thank you for your question.

This month, we will release a new module for the mentor dashboard. This module will allow mentors to quit, with all their mentees being reassigned. Meanwhile, we can reassign all your mentees to other mentors. I just need the confirmation of your wish to see all your mentees being reassigned to others.

Best regards, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:27, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Not currently, no, though it's good to know it exists as an option. What I would like ideally is the ability to tell the system to "not assign any new mentees for the time being" while still remaining on the list and continuing with existing mentees. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

This possibility already exists. You just have to remove your name from Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list and a it to Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list/Manual. This specific list is for people who'd like to be mentors of a limited number of mentees, typically workshops hosts who want to follow up only with people they met. by moving from one list of mentees to the other, your list of assigned mentees will remain the same as before, but you will not get any new mentees. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Understanding the numbers

Could someone (presumably @Trizek (WMF):?) keep us centrally updated with any changes to the Percentage figures of newly created accounts automatically being allocated a Homepage Tab and a Mentor, please?

My reading, as of Feb 2022, is as follows:

• Homepage Tab: - allocated to 25% of new accounts on English Wikipedia
• Mentors: - assigned to 5% of new accounts (is that 5% of the 25%, or 5% of all new accounts?)

I'd welcome clarification as to why the Mentor Dashboard shows far fewer names than Xtools counts? I've only signed up yesterday, and currently see four mentees in my dashboard - two of which have not yet edited - whereas this report shows I have 70 assigned mentees. Is this simply because the others don't yet have their Homepage Tab enabled?
But Xtools also shows I've been assigned an account (User:Playboy Wurld) which was indefinitely blocked over 6 months ago, in June 2021. Had their Homepage been enabled, do recently indeffed users appear on mentee lists, and would it be clear in the Dashboard that they were blocked? Thanks. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:58, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes, at the moment, the homepage is available for 25% of newcomers. Of these newcomers, only 5% have a mentor. So new accounts fall into these 3 categories: no homepage, homepage without mentorship module and homepage with mentorship module. Given the current configuration at English Wikipedia, only a few newcomers have access to the homepage, and even fewer have access to a mentor; maybe something your community should consider to change?

We assign a mentor to everyone. Assignments have been made months ago, and continue to be done as new accounts are created. This is what you see in Xtools. We do this as the vast majority of wikis provide the homepage and a mentor to 100% of new accounts, corresponding to the default configuration of the Growth features. At your MentorDashboard, you only see mentees who the mentorship module turned on.

You may have blocked users being assigned to you. If these users have access to the mentorship module at their homepage, they would be visible at your dashboard, un the mentee's table "blocked" column.

Hope this helps! Thank you for your question, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:45, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF):, I can't remember if you went ahead and did the "up to 100%" (with a plan to shift to 75/80%) on the homepage tab RfC at the village pump. If you did, what timing were you thinking on increasing at least the homepage tab, even if we'd still like more mentors for a somewhat broader rollout there? --Nosebagbear (talk) 13:32, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@MMiller, @Trizek & @Nosebagbear: For big rollouts and changes that will impact significantly on the new user experience (and on the Teahouse Hosts who will have to help them) please could someone give us a brief 'heads-up' at WP:TH, just so all the hosts there can be alerted to check things out before newcomers experience them? I hope this update, and the one immediately beneath it have captured the changing situation correctly. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Nick Moyes and @Nosebagbear -- thanks for keeping track of this and advocating for these features! I know it's been a while since we checked in about them -- my role at WMF has changed in the last couple months, in that I'm now going to be overseeing multiple teams beyond just the Growth team. Now that I have my feet more under me in that role, I'm returning to the rollout of Growth features on English Wikipedia. It's still at 25 / 5% deployment state, and the next step that people recommended is an RfC at VPR to increase it. I'm going to try to draft that in the next week and ask for your feedback. As part of that, we'll have to figure out what we can increase the mentorship volume to -- there are some new features that will help mentors manage the load.

And yes, I will definitely plan to notify the Teahouse hosts for RfC or big changes. That's a good reminder, and I appreciate you getting in touch with them. And yes, your description of both rollouts is accurate (Homepage and Reply Tool). I replied there at Teahouse and I'll now reply to some of the other questions you've asked lately in other places. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 02:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Mentor list - Suggestion for better top-of-page wording

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features

 – Nick Moyes (talk) 16:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest clearer wording of the introductory text at the Growth Team features/Mentor list page. (The final criteria for inclusion will obviously be subject to change.)

This is the list of mentors for the Growth Team features. If you wish to be available to help new users, please add your name and welcome message to the end of the page.

Who can become a mentor?

If you are sufficiently experienced to answer basic editing questions from new users, and enjoy helping people in a friendly and supportive manner, then you are an ideal person to be a Mentor.

How do I sign up?

You need to be Extended Confirmed to edit this list. It is also expected that [at least 250 of your 500 minimum edits will have been made in Mainspace]. If you don't yet meet this essential requirement, please gain a bit more experience before adding yourself. (see Comment 1)

Mentors should sign up using the following formatting: [[User:Name]]|Description. Please use only this syntax; DO NOT add any links or wikitext in your welcome message - otherwise it will break. (see Comment 2) Please limit it to 240 characters. Full instructions are at Growth/Communities/How to introduce yourself as a mentor. (see Comment 3)

What happens next?
Once you have signed up on this list you will start to be randomly assigned users as 'mentees'. Their names will appear in your new 'Mentor Dashboard'. You do not need to proactively welcome them - your invitation message simply invites them to ask you questions should they ever encounter difficulties and need help.

Can I choose who I want to be a mentor to?

In general, no. However, if you only want to act as mentor to a few specific users (e.g. course participants/editathon attendees), add your name instead to this alternative list (but NOT to both!). Then follow 'How To Claim A Mentee'.

• Comment 1: Insert appropriate Criteria, per consensus [this is just a top-of-my head example of how we might define suitability]
• Comment 2: ... otherwise it will break.. what does this mean exactly? everyone's welcome messages is garbled, or just theirs?
• Comment 3: Growth/Communities/How to introduce yourself as a mentor is not a good page. En-wiki should make its own - rather like the Teahouse's Host Expectations. It should include both behavioural expectations and the kind of welcome message to create. Nick Moyes (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

• Personally, I oppose comment 2; keeping things simple and concise makes it easier to follow along and explaining why it breaks could be too much info for someone who just wants to help. Besides, nowadays people have the attention span of a goldfish and nobody really cares about that kind of stuff anyways (however, I do). I would support a brief mention of what, such as, "Otherwise, it will break the coding." I do like this new markup you made because it makes things less choppy. Panini!^🥪 02:47, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

  Yes- I left Comment 2 in verbatim and queried it because it didn't make sense to me. Could one bad line impact on every welcome message mentees see? If so, it must be important enough to leave in, but still needs clarifying. Or is it really needed? Nick Moyes (talk) 10:02, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

  For comment 2, thank you for spotting this lack of clarity. It means that adding anything that is not just simple plain text would lead to various effects from the description being broken for a given user to the entire list not functioning. We are currently thinking about a special page for mentors to sign up. This way we would avoid accidents.

  Regarding comment 3, if you have any idea on how to improve it, please suggest them. It would be more interesting to have one central page that explains how to proceed and which is monitored and updated when needed, instead of having some local pages that are not updated. :)

  Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:17, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Trizek (WMF) Regarding Comment 3: The problem I see is that the page we're talking about (Growth/Communities/How To Configure The Mentors' List) contains information that needs to be on two separate pages with much more appropriate titles. As it stands it is entitled 'How To Configure The Mentors' List' , but is being used as the target of a redirect from a link called /How to introduce yourself as a mentor'. Its contents clearly contain two quite different sets of information, aimed at quite different audiences.

  The first two sub-sections are 'Presentation of mentors on the Homepage' and 'How to add yourself to the mentor list'. These clearly assume a mentorship scheme is already in place on someone's wiki, and the information provided is targeted at individual editors interested in signing themselves up as mentors there. Both sections contain advice relating to the concept of 'How to introduce yourself as a mentor', but definitely not to the highly advanced concept of 'How To Configure The Mentors' List'.

  The next two sub-sections are 'Create a list of mentors' and 'Options'. Now, this is where my mind started to boggle. None of this information is targeted at me, the individual editor wanting to help out. One minute I was being guided how to sign up and welcome new users, then all of a sudden I'm being taught about a wiki-level process that just one administrator might undertake, but which the individual editor would never engage with. Any 'average' editor will surely be confused by this juxtaposition of quite different sets of advice; I certainly was.

  I take your point about keeping advice about the scheme centrally, so that it can be translated into different languages. There there needs to be one page aimed clearly and simply about how to set up and configure mentoring on a wiki, aimed at the administrator level. Then there needs to be a separate page, appropriately titled, on how the 'joe average' editor signs themselves up as a mentor and welcomes people when they come to him/her with questions.

  Putting this guidance both in one page is not appropriate, and just makes for confusion.

  Assuming that we're talking about one translatable page on mediawiki aimed at individual editors, that page on mediawiki should introduce itself by explaining that these are global guidelines, and that some wikis may offer further, more specific advice. The sub-section entitled 'How to add yourself to the mentor list' should definitely highlight that different wikis may enable their own 'gatekeeping' of the mentorship list

  Whilst stumbling around these pages on Mediawiki I found Growth/Communities/How To Interact With Newcomers. This has guidance that conflicts a little bit with this new form of mentorship, yet generally it makes some sense.

  To be honest, I'm not sure I can spread myself any thinner to start making changes to non en-wiki pages to sort this mess out, but at least I hope this response is of some help in understanding the confusion I am feeling, and finding a resolution. I still feel that en-wiki is big enough to want its own guidance page, but I can see that translatable guidance for everyone - especially on smaller wikis does seem a good idea. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for your suggestions, Nick. I understand the confusion you experience while reading these pages. I already made some small changes to improve them based on your feedback. However, completely upgrading pages, or splitting them, takes time to achieve, and they also impact all the efforts already made by translators. In the coming months, we will change how mentors sign-up. these changes will be a nice opportunity to review this help page in depth.

  Regarding global advice, it is partially right. The technical requirement are the same at all wikis. But on how communities decide on who can be a mentor, it is indeed up to them. As a consequence, you can have a local page that describes the guidance. Hy advice is to add a link to the global page, and clearly indicate that the English Wikipedia page may not be up to date.

  Thank you for your help, it is really appreciated!  :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

•  Done As there were no objections, I have added the new text suggestion, with further small inprovements, to the top of the Mentor list page. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:05, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Manual list intro text not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T301623

FYI: If you are on the manual list right now, your custom intro text will not display. phab:T301623 is open for this. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Comment

Hello, Growth Team,

I'm just learning about this whole project and haven't signed up as a mentor yet but I have a comment that comes from my experience of looking at hundreds of expiring drafts every day, almost all from brand new editors. I'd say that 50% of the expiring drafts are autobiographies and they usually take the shape of what I call "social media profile page". If experienced editors come across these pages, they are frequently deleted for being "promotional" but what they truly are are new editors setting themselves up with a page about themselves. They typically include information about themselves, their parents, their school, other content like that. They claim Draft pages under their own names and post this information like they are on Facebook. I started a discussion about this at CSD but I didn't make a proposal so it was really just hearing people's ideas about what might be done about to discourage this and get across the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a social media platform.

I bring this up here because it is so common that the first thing many new editors, especially young editors, do is make a page about themselves. You'd think it would be their User page but it is often a draft under their real name. I think that there needs to be advice for mentors so they have a polite way of discouraging this because I think it must feel terrible to create a page about yourself and your life only have it be speedy deleted and to receive an ominous warning notice posted on your talk page accusing you that you are "advertising". It must feel like a slap in the face. Any guidance about this phenomena? Thanks for undertaking this effort to help integrate new editors into the project. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:59, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Liz! Thank you for thinking hard about the experience of newcomers. This is a phenomenon we see across all Wikipedias, and we've been thinking about as we designed the Growth features. I think there are a few dynamics at play:

• There are the newcomers who are on the wiki to try to promote themselves -- they want there to be a Wikipedia article about them (or their band or their company). We call this newcomer type the "audience builder".
• There are the newcomers who are trying to join the wiki like it's a social network. Maybe they don't have access to other social networks, or maybe they are just looking to find other people on the internet.
• There are the newcomers who are aiming to participate on the wikis in good faith, and they feel like building their "profile" is the sensible first step, because that's what you do first on many other platforms.

When we first deployed the newcomer homepage in 2019, it didn't yet have any suggested edits on it. Rather, the main call-to-action was to "create your user page". We didn't give any particular guidance on how to build the page, and so the results were weak, but we did discover that it was the most popular button on the page. You can see what that looked like and percentages of users who clicked in this graphic. Because we saw that there was enthusiasm for editing a page, we built suggested edits, which is now the dominant call-to-action on the page and has successfully improved newcomer outcomes. But we haven't forgotten about that user page situation, and we've been thinking about whether we should build a structured way to construct a good user page, via this project. And, in fact, there is a research that supports that establishing and projecting an identity of some kind can help new people join a community of practice.

But in general, we believe that we should be helping newcomers make simple article edits as soon as possible. That's because many newcomers come to Wikipedia thinking that they are going to create a page, but don't realize that's the hardest thing to do on Wikipedia, because it requires all the wiki skills at once. Therefore, the Growth features are built to nudge users to start with simple improvements to existing articles so that they can learn about the wikis and build up skills before attempting their own article. In theory, this process may help many newcomers realize that Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for an article about themselves.

How does this all sound? What do you think? Do you think that the "user profile" project would be valuable? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Question

If I should feel like it, do I remove myself by removing myself from the list? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:57, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång yes, note currently that will only prevent you from getting more mentees. An "opt out" "away" mode for mentor dashaboard is being worked on. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:51, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux, thanks, I expected as much. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Vanity question

Do we get a userbox or even better, one of those little icons to put on the top right of our userpage? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:22, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I guess we could make one. But, more importantly, I decided it would be helpful to new users if I were to put a clear text statement right at the very top of my userpage so that any mentee would see it immediately. (Admittedly, right now, it’s less visible because of the large Ukrainian flag I’ve put there.) Nick Moyes (talk) 12:08, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to make some. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:07, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done See {{Template:User mentor}}

This user is a Mentor to new editors
see: Homepage features

(it might need categorisations sorting out as I'm not a dab-hand at UBXes) Nick Moyes (talk) 15:50, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:34, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång:, it's now available as a topicon here: {{User mentor topicon}}. The SVG doesn't scale brilliantly but it's in the realms of acceptability. Zindor (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Hm

So far my list has 4 mentees, 1 of which has edited. Looking at these edits, WP:AIV seems the reasonable next step (there's warnings at the talkpage as well). However, I did notice them via my Mentor dashboard superpower. Should I avoid acting "against" mentees as I normally would an editor with problematic edits? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. Whilst I have blocked a couple of obvious bad faith editors found via the mentor dashboard, my own view is that we're not asking any mentors to police the list of new users, as if we were intentionally monitoring newly-created accounts for inappropriate usernames or bad-faith edits. To do so would add more work, and could become onerous. So, I'd say the choice is yours. As you know, at the Teahouse we often give editors there more leeway there than we might elsewhere. The same could apply here. I guess it comes down to your personal choice on whether you want to or not. I'd be interested to hear what others feel. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:38, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

A use-your-best-judgement approach seems reasonable. If I normaly "police" something it's probably because I noticed something on my watchlist, and this isn't very different. But I also like to hear other's views. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:16, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

It seems indeffed mentees disappear from the list (I didn't report them, it happened anyway). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång I'm pleased that's happening, as mentors don't need to see non-editing users at all. I raised that issue here, and I have to say how impressed I am by @MMiller (WMF) and his team's responsiveness to the issues we've pointed out as they arose. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Glad to see that's working as expected! We're pushing out several changes over the course of a couple weeks, and @Trizek (WMF) will post on this page with a summary of all of them once there is critical mass. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

A similar experience, one of the mentees I am assigned to is publishing snapchat links and posted two meaningless mentorship module questions on my talk page. I would take them as "obvious spam/disruptive edits" and send them a level-2 warning if I were not a mentor to them. But, being a mentor I feel, at the most, I can only take them as simple newbie, naive edits... like, may be they didn't realize that they were actually making contributions here or maybe they didn't understand how to make good contributions here. I think the mentees can't be dealt with like the ordinary newcomers since we are supposed to guide them to be a better contributor here. I think reporting our own mentees to AIV has to be the very last resort for us being a mentor, except for the extreme cases... that's my POV :) Lightbluerain❄ (Talk💬 Contribs✏️) 13:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

As of 28 Feb 2022

Assigned 40 Mentees. Of those, 24 have made zero edits. Of the other 16, 15 one or more edits (one asked me a question) and one vanished (sockpuppet). I only post a Welcome to those posting one or more edits. David notMD (talk) 15:18, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Is this for the whole month or shorter? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:02, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Whole month. David notMD (talk) 10:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Some updates for mentors

Hello

Here is the list of the latest improvements on the mentor dashboard. They are already active.

The main change is that we added a new module about your settings:

• It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away).
• Mentors can specify the volume of questions they want to receive. This affects the number of mentees assigned to you. However, we can't control the number of questions they will ask as it is up to your mentees. They can have a lot of questions for you, or none at all.
• Mentors can claim mentees in an easier way.
• It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign your mentees to other mentors.

Also, we improved the table displaying your mentees. Previously, this table displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. You can still change this value in the filters. Banned users are now excluded from this list.

When you changed the filters on the table of mentees, your choice wasn't saved. We changed this. We will also soon save your choice of the number of lines you want to display on the table of mentees.

We hope you will like these improvements. Let me know if you have questions about these changes!

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) That's very helpful; I have updated the Mentor List 'FAQ's, accordingly. If I change my settings to show all mentees with zero edits and anyone active within the last 6 months, I now see very few names - just 49. But I see 1,900 allocated to me here. Is that because, although they have been automatically assigned a mentor, they have not had their Homepage features enabled? I would like to understand better how this discrepancy arises should you have a spare moment. No rush though. Thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:00, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your appreciation, @Nick Moyes. And also thank you for your question! I tested it on my volunteer account, and I can reproduce it. I will share it with the developers, as it intrigues me as well. Thanks, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes, as the information icon says on the Homepage "This table shows your mentees whose account was created within the past two weeks or who have edited in the last six months, and have the newcomer homepage enabled." The API will give you all your assigned mentees instead, not matter these conditions. Consequently, the numbers on the Homeapge are correct. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) Brilliant! Thanks for that explanation - hope I didn't make unnecessary work for anyone with my question. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:21, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

No problem at all. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:33, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Metric for program success?

What are the goals? How will success/failure be measured? David notMD (talk) 10:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@David notMD, have you checked on Wikipedia:Growth_Team_features? The goal is to increase the retention of new users, and the features have been proven to be useful. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:35, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Mentees removed

All of the mentees I had been assigned to date have been removed, so I now have none. David notMD (talk) 02:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@David notMD Looks the same to me on Special:MentorDashboard, but if you change the "show [object Object]" on the bottom of the "your mentees" box (next to the right and left arrows), it should fix it :D Justiyaya 02:54, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm experiencing the same bug on my mentor dashboard, but Justiyaya's fix works. ––FormalDude talk 02:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

YES. Clicked on that and then selected show 10 and everything was back. But I have to do it every time. David notMD (talk) 03:08, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Appears to have been fized, so list shows when logging in. David notMD (talk) 09:19, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Fixed for me too. I would comment that the options for the number of mentees to show seem a bit daft. I’d suggest 10, 25, 50 and ‘All’. Anyone else feel the same? Nick Moyes (talk) 21:05, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@David notMDNick Moyes Think there might be a reason for that... Since the amount of mentees a mentor has mostly only goes up, and if they mentored for quite a long time, having an "all" option may cause the page to not load at all. But yeah think I agree that it should probably be more like the contributions page where there is a 100 and 500 option. Justiyaya 15:08, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

 Self-trout apologies wrong ping D: Justiyaya 19:24, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

When set to away, Mentees still see mentor even when reassigned

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T308151

Hello! I'm currently on a Wikibreak so I set my mentor status to away, however, I have been checking Wikipedia at least once a day in case someone leaves a message on my talk page that I should read, and when I was checking it one day, I noticed that someone had asked me a question, but instead was sent to Isabelle Belato since I'm set to away. I checked on my alt (who I've claimed as a mentor) and sure enough, it still shows that their mentor is me with no indication that they've been temporarily reassigned to another mentor. Could something be added to indicate to a user that they've been temporarily reassigned to a new mentor since the one they were assigned to is away? I feel this might reduce any confusion that might result from a mentee thinking they're asking a question to one person, only to find out it wasn't directed to who they thought. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:23, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf: I don't think the mentees are "reassigned" - just that the questions are redirected. Do you have a specific account that you think has been reassigned? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:01, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Looking back it appears I'm mistaken and the questions are simply redirected to a different mentor. However, my point still stands that mentee's should have some way of knowing that their questions won't go to the person who's username appears on their screen. From what I see on my alt, there's no difference between the mentor being away and the mentor being active. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:17, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

They should, for example they get this message:

Your primary mentor, "Mentor Username", is currently away. Another mentor, "Redirected Mentor Username", will answer your questions for the time being.

— xaosflux ^Talk 18:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Ah, it appears that message is only shown when the user goes to ask the question (meaning the user who asked a question directed to me on Isabelle's talk page clearly didn't read). I do think that it should be shown immediately on the new user homepage instead of just when you go to ask a question, which would make it a bit more obvious (even though it will make the second message a bit redundant, but sometimes redundancy is good when people tend to skip certain things). ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:50, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd think they are more often to load the page and not also ask a question, so it may not be needed - but that's more up to the Growth Team. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:40, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf @Xaosflux As newcomers are more likely to ask questions to their mentor through the mentorship module, they get the information about you being away in this module (and we are improving it). However, we can't prevent newcomers to contact you by using your talk page directly. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Dashboard

Is there something called the dashboard for asking questions? I cannot find it. Though I have many means of communicating with my mentor, just wanted to know which is the dashboard here from where I can click "Ask a question to mentor" button. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 02:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

FormalDude Can you tell me about it? Itcouldbepossible^Talk 02:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Itcouldbepossible: I think it's Special:Homepage. ––FormalDude talk 02:57, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

It is Special:Homepage. It shows up on my main account, but not on my alt (which I just claimed). So it may be not showing up for everyone. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 04:26, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

In preferences under "Newcomer homepage" you have to have "Display newcomer homepage" checked. ––FormalDude talk 04:35, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I do have it - I've got access to the page, I just can't ask a question. See also [[1]], but I cant see me in my dashboard either. IAmChaos(alt acct - please ping my main) 04:39, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@IAmChaos Maybe that is because you aren't under the mentorship of anyone. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 10:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I should specify. In my main account, I see a mentor. I claimed my alt, but I don't see my main from my alt's account and I don;t see my alt on my main dashboard. (also sorry to hijack your section of the talk page with my own bugs) Happy Editing--IAmChaos 10:33, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@IAmChaos No problem. I think FormalDude can tell you more about this. I really don't know much about it. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 10:38, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Happy editing to you too. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 10:38, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@IAmChaos, your test account is not in the 10% of newcomers who see the mentor module on their Homepage. Only 10% of newcomers see that they have a mentor because your wiki doesn't have enough mentors to cover all newcomers (85 at the moment, ~220 needed). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Ahh, I see - that makes sense. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 16:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@FormalDude Thanks for letting me know about it. I see that this dashboard is really helpful. So many things can be done there. Itcouldbepossible^Talk 10:33, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Still showing up as a mentor

I've removed myself from this list, but I still am showing up as a mentor on mentee's homepages. valereee (talk) 15:55, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Valereee removing yourself from this list only prevents you from getting new mentees. You can set yourself as away in Special:MentorDashboard. There are several tasks open now about opting out of mentorship (e.g. phab:T272376). If you want to "hand off" your mentee to someone else, they can claim the mentee. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:58, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

lol...in order to use the mentor dashboard, I have to enroll as a mentor. :D valereee (talk) 16:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Valereee, you can remove your name from the list, and then visit Special:QuitMentorship. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF), thank you so much! I didn't want to leave people hanging, so I've been trying to respond to them when they do show up, but this is better! :D valereee (talk) 16:48, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the thanks go to you, @Valereee: you helped newcomers on their first steps at Wikipedia! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

FAQ

Seeing that answer from Trizek (WMF) I was like "Special:QuitMentorship should be somewhere on the project page" only to see that it got added. But it's a bit buried. I'm wondering if there would be any sense to putting some of the questions/answers - say everything starting with "How will I know if a question comes from one of my mentees?" - into expandable boxes. In that way people who want to see an answer beyond the first few basic info might see it? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:53, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Love me a good FAQ. valereee (talk) 21:02, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

There is a global FAQ. I regularly update it, and things change over time. It you want to create a local FAQ, be aware that the Growth team won't update it. :)

There is also a mini-FAQ at the top of the list of mentors. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

"Number of mentees assigned to me"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T314050

I am not sure if this is the best place to ask, but a while ago I set the "Number of mentees assigned to me" field at Special:MentorDashboard to "About twice the average". When I visited the dashboard today, I was surprised to see that it had been reset to "Average (the default)", so I changed it back to "About twice the average", and got the little popup that said I had successfully changed it. But any time I refresh the page, it just switches back to "Average (the default)". How do I make my selection stick? DanCherek (talk) 18:55, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello @DanCherek -- thank you for using the mentor dashboard. It sounds like you may be experiencing a bug with that menu. I'm pinging the engineer who would know: @Martin Urbanec (WMF). Martin isn't around this week, but will see this message next week.

While we're talking, what do you think of mentoring? How are you liking the mentor dashboard?

cc @KStoller-WMF MMiller (WMF) (talk) 02:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I think the mentoring system is great, and I like answering any questions that new editors have. (I occasionally try to help out at the Teahouse, but I enjoy this a lot more because I don't have to worry about edit-conflicting with five other people who are also answering a given question.) I can't say that I've used the dashboard too much, though, just because I primarily interact with mentees when they ask me a question on my talk page, so I don't really find myself needing to look at a list of all mentees or to sort them by edit date, edit count, etc. But it is helpful to have a centralized place where settings and buttons (like mentor status and claim mentee) are located. DanCherek (talk) 03:17, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I’ve been quite surprised by how few questions I’ve had to deal with. Hardly onerous, and I wasn’t expecting it to be so quiet. I do check Dashboard from time to time, looking both for constructive editors who I feel would benefit from a Welcome and/or a ‘thanks’, as well as those who’ve had all their edits reverted. I don’t go out of my way to tell anyone I’m their mentor, though. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:45, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @Nick Moyes and @DanCherek for the feedback about the mentor dashboard!

One of the ideas the Growth team is exploring as we start a new Positive Reinforcement project is the idea of including a way for Mentors to send more "personalized praise" to mentees.

We are still deciding exactly what that looks like: should we encourage mentors to send Thanks to a newcomer who reaches a certain milestone? Should we incorporate WikiLove or an easy way to message / welcome a mentee who reaches a "praise-worthy" milestone? Should we surface praise-worthy mentees via the mentor dashboard, or do we need a notification or other method? Let me know if you have any feedback or if you have any other ideas for how we could encourage mentors or experienced contributors to encourage newcomers in some way. Thanks! KStoller-WMF (talk) 18:57, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @DanCherek for flagging this issue, @Xaosflux for filling the task and @MMiller (WMF) for the ping. I had a look at the issue, and indeed, this is only a display bug (in other words, the choice you make is persistent, but the dashboard doesn't recognize it). I uploaded a patch that should fix the issue (it will be available the next-next week at the latest). Have a nice week, Martin Urbanec (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@DanCherek: this appears to just be a display bug on the mentordashboard (it always says "average" even if the value is actually something else). I've opened phab:T314050 on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:07, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Great, thanks! DanCherek (talk) 14:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

This list needs some kind of monitoring

I just happened to notice that one of my adoptees, who hasn't edited in months, was on this list. I noticed this because they got asked a question by a mentee, and found that they had ten unanswered mentee questions over the last few months. Answering those questions does little good at this point: the chance to retain those editors has passed. I have now removed this user from the list, but this problem could well happen again. I think we need some kind of standard, or even better, automated process based on a standard, to clean up this list. Since its easy to add oneself back to the list, I'm thinking a month of inactivity should get you dropped from the list, with a talkpage message about it. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 16:46, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@CaptainEek just removing someone from this list won't remove all their mentor:mentee relationships - only prevent you from getting new mentees. phab:T310292 and phab:T272376 may also need to be looked at as well. As far as removing idle users from here, it seems like a fine enough idea, and a bot likely could do it for total inactive users like the AWB Checkpage is done. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:14, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! The Growth team is continuing to make improvements to the Mentorship feature, and phab:T272376 is in progress now. The Growth team is also working on some improvements to the Mentor list, you can read more details here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Structured_mentor_list.

This new Structured Mentor List is already testable at all beta wikis and at test.wikipedia.org. If you are interested in previewing the change, you can view Phabricator task T312102 for more details.

We will also be sure to discuss all of this further before a rollout on English Wikipedia, so once this change is tested on our pilot wikis, we'll start a discussion around the Structured Mentor List here. KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:28, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

A mentor for each newcomer: where are we at?

I started a new topic relevant to mentors at Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#A_mentor_for_each_newcomer:_where_are_we_at? Please join! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

An important update regarding the list of mentors

Hello

This is an important information about the list of mentors.

Starting October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now.

Why this change?

At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected.

We have observed some cases where mentors were not following the instructions, which generated some mistakes. The old syntax [[user:Name]]|Description is confusing and won't be used anymore.

Also, this new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.

What will change?

We will add a new special page to your wiki: Special:ManageMentors.

The page where mentors are currently listed will be edited. The list of mentors will be replaced by {{Special:ManageMentors}}, the rest of the page will not be changed.

If your wiki has a separate list of mentors for workshop mentors, this list will be converted as well.

What are the new features?

After the upgrade, new mentors will signup by visiting Special:MentorDashboard. At this page, mentors can change the number of mentees they take care of, mark themselves as away or quit.

The new system prevents users who made less than 500 edits and who created their account less than 30 days ago to become mentors. These values can be changed by the community on special:EditGrowthConfig.

Special:ManageMentors will list all mentors, and the last time they edited. It will look like a table (example). This special page can be transcluded to any page (example).

Mentors will edit their description and settings directly at Special:MentorDashboard. Administrators will be able to edit any mentor's description and settings at Special:ManageMentors, or remove a mentor from the list of mentors. This will reassign all newcomers the mentor has to other mentors.

What mentors have to do?

No action is needed regarding your inscription to the mentors list.

You will have to update the description of the list of mentors, to remove the old instructions and explain the new sign-up process to become a mentor.

When will it happen?

The deployment will happen starting October 26, after 13:00 UTC. The change will be made by Martin Urbanec (WMF).

How can we know more about it?

The project page, documentation and FAQ have been updated. These pages can be translated.

Of course, if you have any question about this upgrade, please ping me!

Thank you, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

• Just FYI, looks like this will make edits to MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json "on behalf of" users who otherwise can't edit that page - in case anyone is wondering how they edited it in the page history. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:58, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

  You're right. I can go deeper into the technical details if needed, but adding the technical details to the announcement would have made it muuuuch bigger. So I skipped them :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Protection level

@Xaosflux: Would you mind unprotecting this page? Since the mentor sign-up system is now handled elsewhere it no longer needs to be protected. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:49, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

@Pppery  Done — xaosflux ^Talk 23:21, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: You seem to have fully protected the page instead. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:30, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Whoops, fixed. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:53, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Help desk § Mentorship question

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Help desk § Mentorship question. Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 12:07, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

How can we double the number of mentors?

Greetings

Based on our observation of other wikis, it seems that providing a mentor to each batch of 500 new accounts is a reasonable proportion; it allows mentors to have 2 to 6 questions per week. For English Wikipedia, we need to have at least 200 mentors listed as active to provide a mentor to all new accounts.

As I write this message, 89 mentors who accept new assignments are listed. And at the moment, only 10% of newcomers get a mentor at English Wikipedia.

My questions are:

• Should we move from 10% to 40% of new accounts getting a mentor, as we have enough mentors to manage ?
• How can we double the number of mentors so that all newcomers get a equal change to get a mentor when they sign up?

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Any opinions? :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) - I actually thought we were at 20% on mentors, not 10%. Looking at my question rate (I realise there are statistical blips), it doesn't feel like I'm getting 0.5-1.5 questions a week atm. If we are at 10%, then I'd suggest moving to 25%, as a quadrupling would be rather drastic and I'd be nervous about losing mentors from the (apparent) shock of a surge in questions.

In terms of how to get more mentors, the various options that came to mind have been tried - usually both in our original efforts and in the last 8 weeks or so by a couple of different active mentors. So I can't give any great advice there, I'm afraid. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:13, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I could definitely handle more questions - one thing that has me concerned is that people without a mentor start styling their sections "Question from X", for example Special:Diff/1147028977. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 20:49, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear, we can have a progressive increase for the percentage. We did it for Spanish Wikipedia recently, from 15% to 35%, and one week later, to 50%.

@Sungodtemple nice finding, indeed a good example of the need for mentors. :)

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:33, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Make a mentorship-drive landing page; come up with a catchy one-sentence hook and we can advertise it on the watchlist notice. You can see if the Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost team would like to advertise the program as well. (Wikipedia:Growth Team features isn't a great landing page for the call-to action, it is (a) quite dense in reading (b) has a confusing title. If you haven't asked them yet, try the hosts at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux, thank you for the suggestions.

Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list should be the landing page. I'm not sure it should be under Growth pages; maybe it would be better to shorten it to Wikipedia:Mentors list, and this link should be put everywhere?

I can assist on making this page more catchy by suggesting things. However, as my goal is to let you, English Wikipedians, to take over as your project like all other wikis that use Growth features, I would prefer to step back. Same thing for the Signpost: I can assist, but I think it should come from community members.

Teahouse hosts have been contacted multiple times. I'm now assuming that the ones who wanted to join are now mentors. Maybe someone else, using other words, would have a different success? :)

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) i posted a request at MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Mock_up. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:36, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much, @Xaosflux! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:39, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like we've gotten +42 mentors since that went live so far! — xaosflux ^Talk 15:34, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah this definitely needs a catchier and shorter title. Galobtter (talk) 20:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This should probably be called Wikipedia:Mentor signup and focus on that aspect rather the list of mentors aspect. I'm not even sure this needs to transclude Special:ManageMentors - it can just link there, since that list is more up-to-date. Galobtter (talk) 20:38, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I think the watch-list message is a good idea and should get a good amount of sign ups. But this should also be organically advertised, so that people continue to sign up after the watchlist message. I made the tag for people asking questions link here, which should help as as people see this feature being used more and more on their watchlist, they might sign up. I wonder if signing up should also be somewhere in preferences too, for people who are experienced enough. Galobtter (talk) 20:30, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Galobtter, how to you envision the signup process in preferences? Would simple link to the current process (goind to Special:EnrollAsMentor) be enough? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, a link or something seems reasonable. Galobtter (talk) 16:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Is there a reason why the number of assigned mentees can only be doubled but not tripled or quadrupled? Nythar (💬-🍀) 17:10, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nythar, the "half" and "double" options allow you to increase or decrease the number of mentees assigned to you, as a way to statistically change the potential number of questions you get.

However, you can increase the number of newcomers assigned to you, and not getting much questions. And you can lower the number of newcomers but be randomly assigned to newcomers who have a lot of questions.

As an illustration, let's say that you get 100 new accounts assigned to you over one week. Of these 100 accounts, we can't know if these users will ask you a question. You can have 0 questions asked, or 20 users asking you complex questions.

So "half" and "double" is purely indicative and can vary as we don't know how many new accounts get your name.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd support increasing to 50% now that we have 150 mentors. I think it'd be good to do a staged roll out upwards so that people have time to adjust to the number of questions coming in (and adjust their settings too). Galobtter (talk) 09:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

We did it for Spanish Wikipedia: starting from 15% to 35%, and one week later, to 50%.

When should we start? The more newcomers mentors get, the more likely they are to help promising users (which would avoid disillusion). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:26, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Well we've gained lots more mentors - can we start by bumping the % of new editors receiving mentors so we get to the same mentor/mentee ratio that we were on the 27th March (or thereabouts)?

I'd suggest doing that in two bumps (I'd suggest going doing 60/40 of the change, rather than 50/50), with the first to be done asap. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your enthusiasm! Let's wait for more opinions. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I support this plan. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:24, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) - apologies if I missed further comment on this elsewhere - has this increase taken place? Nosebagbear (talk) 11:02, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear, no, it hasn't happen yet. I was waiting for more opinions, and a clear "go". :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Reading the discussion it seems like there is enough support to move forward, so I've logged a task T341399 (Increase percentage of newcomers who receive Growth mentorship at English Wikipedia), and will prioritize the task next week unless anyone here requests that we hold off on making that change.

We have 159 mentors currently, so I think we should be able to increase the number of new accounts receiving Mentorship to 25% without adding too much extra work for Mentors. We'll then check in and decide if we should do a secondary increase.

Thanks everyone for chiming in and for helping newcomers at English Wikipedia! KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:29, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The number of newcomers getting a mentor is now at 25%.

We will observe the effects of this change for a few weeks, and then decide if we increase to 50%.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Seven weeks ago, we changed the percentage of newcomers receiving a mentor to 25%. Now is the time to decide if we should assign a mentor to 50% of newcomers.

On our side, we haven't observed any changes, except what was predictable: more questions to mentors.

Based on what we observed at other wikis, we advise to have one active mentor for each group of 500 new accounts created monthly. If the wiki has 2,000 new accounts monthly, 4 mentors are enough (even if, as always, the more, the better). Over the last months, English Wikipedia got between 85k and 125k new accounts per month. The average is 100K new accounts per month.

As I write this message, more than 140 mentors have their names assigned to new accounts. It means that you have more than the needed number of mentors to switch to 50%. We can even imagine to define an higher threshold. What do you think?

In the case of a 100% scenario, your wiki should have between 170 and 250 mentors to work comfortably (200 being the average number). It is a scenario we have to start working on as well.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I re-posted the message above in a new section, for clarity and visibility. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Clarifications?

I think there's something missing below the bullet point "Can I set myself as Away from mentorship for a few days?". The answer starts with a description of the dashboard filter, with no explanation of how that is relevant to setting an "Away" flag. First I thought it referred to what the mentors see, and that only mentees who have edited will be displayed, but that's unrelated to flagging oneself as "Away"; then I thought it referred to what the mentees see on their dashboard (so if their mentor hasn't edited for a day or two, they won't show up) but that doesn't seem to tally with the fact that mentees get assigned a random mentor automatically, so why would they filter the list? And a mentor will by definition have made more than one edit. I suspect it is really obvious what this means if you know what the dashboard looks like and how the system works, but to me it's just confusing. --bonadea contributions talk 07:17, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Wait, maybe my confusion is even greater than I thought – I assumed that "setting oneself as Away" meant that the mentor's existing mentees would see that the mentor wasn't available. But maybe it refers to not being assigned any new mentees while "Away"? Perhaps I'm more clueless than most people, but I do think some clarification of the wording would be good :-) --bonadea contributions talk 10:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@Bonadea, you're right: something was missing. I fixed the text. Thank you for spotting it! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Disillusioned

I signed up for mentorship yesterday, and have been allocated about 20 users. Every single edit by all of those users was either reverted, or, in one case, speedy deleted per WP:G11. I made some of the reverts and added the {{db-g11}} tag, which isn't really what mentorship is about - though I did everything in good faith with an eye towards what was best for the project. Have I just got the wrong end of the stick? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:34, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I (now) never look at what mentees are doing. I try to answer those who ask at my talkpage, but I don't actively check mentees editing. I think many, maybe most, of those who register don't necessarily have "want to be a Wikipedian" in mind. But some do, and if they communicate somewhere, we can try to help. I asked a related question at Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features/Mentor_list#Hm. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:47, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I mean the list of "mentees" is just a list of random accounts so it's going to reflect that most new edits aren't going to be the most constructive. I think beyond answering questions there's really not anything else to do. Galobtter (talk) 09:09, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ritchie333 Don't get disillusioned yet! Thanks for volunteering to be a Mentor and for being so proactive in reviewing newcomer edits! Some mentors focus only on answering mentee questions, rather than patrolling newcomer edits. So feel free to find what works well for you.

The Growth team is working on a new feature for Mentors that will surface productive newcomers to Mentors: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Positive_reinforcement#Personalized_praise_3

My hope is that will be a chance for Mentors to engage with newcomers who have potential, but who might not reach out and ask questions. We'll be A/B testing the feature on a few pilot wikis soon. My hope is that if Mentors spend the time to offer personalized feedback and connect with new editors that show promise, that it will have a positive impact on new editor retention. We'll have more data soon.  :)

Thanks for being willing to give Mentorship a try! And please let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts on the Personalized_praise project! Thanks, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:53, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ritchie333 I'd agree with KStoller-WMF. I never now look at any edits made by mentees unless they have specifically asked me a question. TBH: the majority of those users who do ask at my talk page don't often respond or edit further. But some do and a few of those have gone on to continue editing. Even at those times when all other Wikipedia activities have had to go on the back burner because of IRL issues, I do try to respond ASAP to those who have taken the trouble to ask me something. If you go to my (rather long) talk page, and such for the text "Question from" you'll see a range of questions I've received and and responses I've given. So, don't give up! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:04, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 5 June 2023

Please remove User:Pahunkat from the mentor list. They are inactive since 2022 and are not on break. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 11:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Admins can edit mentors preferences and remove them, using Special:ManageMentors. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

The edit request is a primary way a non-admin can request this sort of admin action. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:48, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

 Already done by Extraordinary Writ on 5 June: Special:Diff/1158696556. DanCherek (talk) 23:53, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorting by last active

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T339149

Sorting by "last active" in the table is currently a bit silly as the field includes both time and date (e.g., "00:13, 11 June 2023") and time comes first, so it ultimately sorts by hour rather than from earliest date to latest date. DanCherek (talk) 23:48, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Good catch @DanCherek! T339149 documents this bug (that is related to how English Wikipedia formats dates). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

What qualifies a user to become a mentee

@Trizek (WMF): Drat8sub, an experienced user who has been editing for 7 years recently became my mentee. Drat8sub asked me about this on my talk page, and apparently neither of us knows how this happened. Is there an option that assigns users to a mentor in preferences? Or is this a mistake? Nythar (💬-🍀) 06:52, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

From the GrowthExperiments log it seems @Tanbiruzzaman: was my mentor (that also I dont know how), and recently they set @Nythar: as my mentor along with many other users' mentor has been set. Kindly someone explain how these work and what's going on, I have no idea. Drat8sub (talk) 09:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@Nythar @Drat8sub thank you for the ping.

We assign a mentor to everyone, including old accounts. I understand that it might be confusing: a 7 years old account is supposed to be experienced, and not needing a mentor. But it some 7 years old accounts only have a couple of edits and would benefit from a mentor.

We are aware of the problem, and we plan to work on it soon; it is a bit delayed as we have some changes in the development team. The idea would be to avoid these notifications for users who don't need them.

Also, anyone can opt-out mentorship in their preferences. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:49, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Notifications

I signed up for mentoring, but one of the issues is that there is no way for me to know when I have a new mentee without manually checking the dashboard. I don't have time to do this frequently, but I want to know if a new mentee is there immediately, so I can review their edits and welcome them. Can the team consider implementing some basic notifications about when a new mentee is added to my list? Steven Walling • talk 17:37, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

@Steven Walling not sure if that would be a good default option, as new editors sign up they are randomly assigned to mentors, and many of them never make an edit. This would require a software enhancement to build, so could request that by using this form. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:58, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

There are already filtering tools in place we could leverage. The default is that the mentor dashboard doesn't show editors with no edits (screenshot) Steven Walling • talk 19:42, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

@Steven Walling, thank you for signing up!

As xaosflux explained, you will get hundred of new accounts getting your name each day, and most of the will never contact you. This is why we never considered creating a notification when each user is assigned to you. It would be useful for very small wikis, where a new user is an actual event!

This is also why we don't show users with 0 edits on your MentorDashboard, as it would mostly give you a list of inactive users.

You can filter "your" mentees on the Mentor dashboard, but you can also find them on RecentChanges (search for "mentees" in the filters). Assisting active users is a good way to encourage them.

We also have a test ongoing at a few wikis: we offer a list of praiseworthy mentees a mentor can thank and encourage. The initial results are promising.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:22, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

If I can't get notifications about new mentees the chances of me going and checking the dashboard every week are zero. I don't have time to do that. Steven Walling • talk 16:31, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

As a volunteer, I confess never checking the dashboard, except to set my times away or to keep an eye on active users. I'm busy enough with the questions asked by newcomers. :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I forgot: on the future feature I described, mentors will get a notification for each praiseworthy mentee they have. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:55, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

That link leads to a blank page, but I agree it sounds promising if there is a filtered list of mentees to thank. Steven Walling • talk 17:04, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I now have fixed the link. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 02:57, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Marking a mentor as "away"

Hi! I asked about this at mw:Talk:Growth/FAQ#Third-party pausing in mentorship? and was recommended (as one of two options) this venue as follow-up.

I'm aware of a weeks-long unannounced wikibreak being taken by a mentor, whose mentees' questions are a-piling up unanswered. I'm wondering if this editor can be marked as "away" until returning to activity, to improve mentee user experience.

I guess there's not established policy around this, although it is technically feasible. Folly Mox (talk) 21:29, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox we don't want to make a habit of it, but we can. Suggest (a) first attempting to contact the mentor on their page and by email; (b) wait a reasonable time - a few days at least; (c) open an edit request here for an admin to deal with it. The page target of the edit request is MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:33, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

 Doing... Folly Mox (talk) 23:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Well it's been timestamp of this edit minus the above one, which spans a whole weekend at least, and I've received no email back from this mentor, nor has she edited. I checked my spam folder.

It seems like Special:ManageMentors might be an easier route, but I'll give the recommendation a go:

Under mentor 39886606, can |automaticallyAssigned= be changed from true to null? Folly Mox (talk) 06:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 00:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, User:xaosflux. I'm not trying to act ungrateful, but I don't see that edit in the page history. Am I looking at it wrong? Folly Mox (talk) 01:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox hmmm, thank you for the note, it looks like it didn't commit, checking now. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox saved (it is true-->false, not null; but that wasn't the problem, i'll try to replicate the original problem I ran in to). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why I assumed without reading the documentation or looking at the parameter anywhere else in the .json file that it would be treated as a string like the parameters in our lua templates rather than an actual boolean data type like javascript has. Probably I'm just not good at thinking. Regardless, it might be a case for using the ManageMentors interface unless the problem run into in directly editing the file has piqued a technical curiosity. Thanks for your help in any case. Folly Mox (talk) 12:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

FWIW from the original topic title, you can not set someone as indef-away; so setting this person as auto=no only stops new assignments, it's not stopping current mentees from contacting them...so I also marked them away. BUT, away can only be for 1 year. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:33, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Also realized that is an unlogged change. Opened phab:T345272 for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Being assigned new mentees was the only real concern (of mine, at least). I figured keeping up with questions from existing mentees would not be especially onerous, and certainly wouldn't want them unable to use the mentorship module to ask questions just because of the situation. Folly Mox (talk) 19:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox when you get marked as away it also helps direct your questions to someone that isn't away. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:43, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

For accountability, I must mention here for the record that I was unaware of the separate toggle "allow other Wikipedia editors to email me" in Special:Preferences, and probably missed the email sent in reply to mine, which I only learned about just now when the mentor in question alluded to it on my usertalk. Will accept trouts as long as they are not harmed in the process of slapping me. Folly Mox (talk) 19:33, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Per Special:ManageMentors, there are 8 "active" mentors who have been gone for longer than ARoseWolf. I also just removed Paradise Chronicle from the mentor list since they were sitebanned by ArbCom. We really should establish better processes here. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:33, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

It seems that a practical solution is set by a fe communities: having some admins checking the list, pausing away mentors, then notifying them. If they are back, they can end the pause. If they are still inactive after the break, they are removed. The idea is to quickly react, so that newcomers won't be left alone. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

This isn't my usual area, so I'm not prepared to launch an RFC or anything, but I do think it would be beneficial to the new editor experience if we did have some sort of policy where mentors who go inactive for a set period of time are notified and paused. If my request above is actioned, maybe it can act as precedent, and if T321509 is deployed, the module can handle the workload. Folly Mox (talk) 07:01, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

By the way, there is no need to request a change on MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json, as Special:ManageMentors allow admins to edit a mentor's setting anytime. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:24, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF) the edit request is the way to get the attention of patrolling admins. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:17, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

50% of newcomers getting a mentor

[Reposting from above, for visibility.]

Seven weeks ago, we changed the percentage of newcomers receiving a mentor to 25%. Now is the time to decide if we should assign a mentor to 50% of newcomers.

On our side, we haven't observed any changes, except what was predictable: more questions to mentors.

Based on what we observed at other wikis, we advise to have one active mentor for each group of 500 new accounts created monthly. If the wiki has 2,000 new accounts monthly, 4 mentors are enough (even if, as always, the more, the better). Over the last months, English Wikipedia got between 85k and 125k new accounts per month. The average is 100K new accounts per month.

As I write this message, more than 140 mentors have their names assigned to new accounts. It means that you have more than the needed number of mentors to switch to 50%. We can even imagine to define an higher threshold. What do you think?

In the case of a 100% scenario, your wiki should have between 170 and 250 mentors to work comfortably (200 being the average number). It is a scenario we have to start working on as well.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 12:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

As it is possible to increase the number of newcomers getting a mentor, and as no one reacted to my previous message, we will move from 25% to 50% of newcomers getting a mentor next week.

Unless, of course, if you have legit concerns. :)

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:12, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Away bot?

Should we look in to having an adminbot set inactive users as not-avaialble for new mentees? Something that could probably be handled by MusikAnimal's user:MusikBot II if he is willing. Similar to the task that cleans up Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON perhaps. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:53, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

My position here is probably expected given the thread two above, but for the record yes I think this would be a helpful thing to automate via adminbot until and unless T321509 is deployed, and is apparently the way things are already handled on de, ru, and ko Wikipedias, according to that same phab task's documentation.

I would support a relatively short duration before a mentor is auto-awayed: something like five or six days, so new users can at least expect an answer within a week, but not so brief that mentors are getting their status changed just because they're out of town for the weekend or something. Folly Mox (talk) 20:12, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

phab:T321509#9118835 (posted about a week before the above) sounds promising. If I were going to write a bot, I'd rather do it right and make something the other wikis could use with minimal configuration. So it's probably just as much time to fix it in MediaWiki. I don't know when I'll be able to get to it, but either way I'm interested :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 05:56, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems clear that multiple communities want and need this, so the Growth team will move forward with working phab:T321509.

We have a considerable backlog of work committed to, but I've chatted with Growth team engineers and we will aim to get this task done before the end of the calendar year. I'm thinking we would implement logic that is something like:

• Set mentors as Away after X days of absence.
• Remove mentors from Mentorship after Y days of absence.

We would then let communities configure those settings via Special:EditGrowthConfig, and also allow communities to opt out of this feature (if they don't think it's needed or if they want to utilize a separate bot to handle this).

Does that sound like it would help with the issue described here? Is there further logic we should consider?

I've asked @Trizek (WMF) to look at the default settings of existing bots already in use, as we'll want to set a reasonable baseline for the X and Y variables. We'll update the Phab task once we have a clearer plan. Feel free to offer any further feedback here or in that task: phab:T321509. Thanks! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

December 4: your questions regarding mentorship

The Growth team is happy to invite you to the next community conversation! We will talk about mentorship.

Information

• Date: Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC)
• Video conference link: Google Meet
• Meeting language: English
• Subject: Mentorship

Objective

• Let's have a tour of the mentorship features
• Let's discuss on how you use mentorship at your wiki

You can optionally signup on the conversation page.

We are really looking forward meeting you! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion to "retire" mentees

Hi @Trizek (WMF) et al. I have been a mentor since the scheme started and believe it is a net benefit, despite the majority of my auto-assigned mentees never contacting me and some of those who did never getting beyond a couple of edits! I know that we are currently only assigning about 50% of new editors to a mentor because we are short of those willing to take on the task.

• My suggestion is to automatically de-assign newbie editors after, say, six months, freeing up our existing pool of mentors to take on someone else.

I don't see any downsides as by then the mentee will know who their mentor is and have an established relationship with them (if they were ever in contact). Those who didn't make contact within six months would be very unlikely to do so subsequently. The homepage tab could be tweaked to say after the six months something like "Congratulations, you are now experienced enough not to need a mentor! Use the Help Desk if you need advice from now on." instead of giving a name. I'd also suggest that anyone who activates the newcomer homepage when they already have over six month's experience should get that message. (I was amused that when I activated the tab to see what it did, I was auto-assigned someone less experienced than I am.) Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:32, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the the suggestion, @Michael D. Turnbull!

I agree that we might want to consider something like this. Mentors have the option to filter their Special:MentorDashboard mentee list by edit count and most recent edit, but I can see how it might make sense to also de-assign older and inactive accounts at a certain point as well. It would be great to eventually scale Mentorship to 100% of new accounts at English Wikipedia! (T323048)

We've actually received a similar request from Spanish Wikipedia: T327050. Basically the request is to remove or hide inactive mentees from Mentorship. I'm wondering if integrating something like this would complement another idea I've been pondering: inviting experienced editors who visit the homepage to consider becoming mentors (provided they meet the Mentorship minimum requirements). It seems more logical than assigning them a mentor, as you pointed out!

Do you think those two ideas would help?

We haven't been able to fit in much Mentorship work recently due to a reduced team size, and focus on the Community configuration project. But I'll talk to others on the Growth team about these ideas and see if/when we can start to fit in more of these Mentorship improvements. Thanks again for the feedback AND for being a mentor to new editors! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:53, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I would support all the suggestions here. Getting to 100% mentorship seems like a laudable goal, if it can be done without swamping our limited pool of mentors. At present, I've seen confusion from newbies at venues like the Teahouse, when some have mentors and others don't. Ping me to any future discussion if you want more feedback. Mike Turnbull (talk) 09:58, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Michael D. Turnbull! I've added an initial design task to cover making a change to the Mentorship module when the Homepage is accessed by experienced editors: T362714. And I added a note about your feedback to T327050. I'll chat more with the Growth team about this work. I don't think we can fit in this work immediately, but I'm hoping we can take some time after we wrap up Community configuration work to focus on a some of the highest priority Mentorship tasks. I appreciate your offer to provide feedback, I'll keep that in mind as we move this work forward! Thanks, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:08, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, was it ever considered to make this an opt-in thing? Something like the user homepage saying "Would you like a mentor to ask WP-questions? Click here and you will be assigned a volunteer!" It would likely reduce the number of "no-show" mentees. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:33, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Good question, I wasn't actually around for the early planning of Mentorship, so I don't know if an "opt-in" option was discussed. I know there was an initial research project and interviews conducted with community members that helped guide the project. @Trizek (WMF) might be able to provide more context.

In my opinion, one of the benefits of Mentorship is that it introduces new account holders to the fact that there is a whole community of editors behind the wikis. Seeing an experienced editor's welcoming message on the homepage helps make that connection in a small way. (I would love to further that connection by allowing Mentors to add an avatar to their Homepage message eventually: T297787!) Do you agree, or do you think I'm over-estimating newcomer interest in human connection when getting started on the wikis?

That being said, I can certainly see how an opt-in might help limit mentees to a more invested group, and therefore Mentors might have more time to provide proactive support to their mentees. A somewhat related project we've been experimenting with is Personalized praise. The Personalized praise feature is meant to help surface promising mentees to their Mentors. We want to make some further improvements before we scale the feature to all wikis, but we did see the feature lead to a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity at Spanish Wikipedia (experiment analysis). That being said, we can release the feature (which is community configurable) to English Wikipedia if Mentors are interested in trying it.

Thanks for the feedback! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

On the welcoming message, it certainly can't hurt. The mentor-thing may be kind-of "low impact", but every now and then, there's an interaction like User_talk:Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång#Question_from_RyanTahamid_(10:39,_5_April_2024), which indicates it's worth it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:17, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

That's great to see. :) I just reviewed a few of your recent Mentee questions and answers, and it's clear that the advice you provide is all personalized and very helpful. Thanks for being a mentor and for responding to your mentee's questions with such empathy! KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:55, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

This one went pretty well: User_talk:Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång/Archive_8#Question_from_Grandmother6_(19:35,_30_December_2022) Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:49, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

That's amazing! I'm sure some editors would have just given her some COI links and left it at that, but you even helped her out on Commons. Kudos for going the extra mile there! KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't do that to Grandmother, could I. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:55, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello everyone, and sorry for the late reply.

We are currently assigning a mentor to 50% of newcomers at English Wikipedia for one unique reason: we believe that mentors could be overwhelmed if we double the number of questions they can answer. Based on early deployments, we roughly estimated that one mentor is needed for each batch of 500 new accounts. Maybe this number is wrong for English Wikipedia? Consulting all active mentors regarding the workload questions from newcomers represent in their routine could be interesting, it could lead to a change in this percentage.

Regarding the opt-in option, we discussed it when the mentorship project started, and opting-in was a posible option. When we took a look at existing mentorship projects at many wikis, we found out that welcome templates (the ones that clearly invite newcomers to contact the person who signed the message) actually contact their "mentor". Being a mentor myself at French Wikipedia, I see newcomers whose first edit is at my talk page, because they have a question: they have doubts and I'm here to reassure them. You certainly observed this on your side. Only assign a mentee to people with 1+ edit would not be fair for this doubtful users.

We have several options regarding how mentorship assignment can evolve:

• remove users with a certain level of edits that would be considered as experienced (but it would be a low percentage of users)
• remove users who have virtually 0% chance to edit, even if we can't guarantee 0% (we can find cases of users who registered years ago and started editing)
• display a mentor name on the homepage, but with no mentor/mentee relationship. The relationship would become real when the editor start editing, this first edit being possibly a question to the name given. The goal is to reduce the number of readers assigned to a mentor.
• add a notification inviting experienced users passing a certain threshold regarding tenure and edits to join mentorship

Any other idea is welcomed! :)

Best, Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)