User talk:Trizek (WMF)

Dead link

Hi, red link in your message about talkpage discussion ... on my talkpage. Tony (talk) 08:39, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Tony, and thank you for letting me know.

It is very strange: I've used the same code as on the test message above, where the link is blue.

I'll investigate the issue and provide an update.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 08:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

A little heads-up

Hello there Trizek,

I'm currently taking a small WikiBreak. I'll certainly be able to help, but will be slow to respond. Thanks for leaving me a message on my talk page though (which is a rare occurrence XD)

Rebestalic^{[dubious—discuss]} 20:16, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello Rebestalic and than you for your reply.

Enjoy your wikibreak: taking care of yourself should be your priority. :)

Best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello

I received some message at de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Bookku since I do not know German language, I tried google translator but it was not clear enough to me. Is there any thing I can be of help ?

Thanks & Warm regards

Bookku (talk) 10:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello Bookku

I've made a query to find newcomers on German Wikipedia and you were in the list I got. :)

My message is an invite for you to participate to a consultation about talk pages. We are looking for opinions about how people use talk pages on the wikis, and what is their feeling about that.

Since you are more active on English Wikipedia, I invite you to participate to the consultation, but in English.

Your opinion matters! Thank you for your help, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:52, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions at Wikimania 2019

Re: Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania_2019. This comes a little late. You are probably unaware that applications for a scholarship to Wikimania were closed and decided already some time ago. As on of the major participants working with Community Tech for years in some highly important new policies/software developments for the quality control of new articles, I am naturally disappointed that my application for a scholarship has again been declined. Unlike the many privileged salaried staff who enjoy the same 'business' trip every year, very few users are accorded help with attending the Wikimania conferences. It is too much to expect volunteers who spend 1000s of hours contributing to Wikipedia and its development to spend upwards of $2000 to attend this event and provide their input. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:00, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง, I'm sorry that your application has been declined. I'm just the messenger, but I can understand that you are disappointed. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:12, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I realise you are just the messenger, but you are both salaried and will almost certainly be enjoying a free 'business' trip to Sweden to discuss all your work and projects. Apologies if I'm wrong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

You mean that I will go to Wikimania for one of the most tiring weeks of my year of work? Wikimania was a pleasant relaxing moment when I attended as a volunteer, now it is very different. I'm not going there to waste donors money. So please avoid that kind of undertone accusations with me. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 07:19, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

i surely hope if my english was more skillful

if i do not know how to say a certain word or word in english, then is it allowed to help yourself in using google translate? i know that some websites are against rules, is that so? (i'm really right now so if there is no permission then please avoid punishment.Atlantic Channel (talk) 21:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Hello Atlantic Channel

You should ask the person who welcomed you on your talk page (see at the bottom): John of Reading. He knows English Wikipedia better than me, so he will give you an accurate reply!

Best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 07:25, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, John's reading is not active till then, I tried to ask him before reading the notice at the top, but I can notAtlantic Channel (talk) 12:23, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

revert

salut trizek, juste pour te dire, j'ai laissé un message là.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#reverts

je pointe une situation bizarre. statistiquement je suis souvent réverté ici, et rarement sur wiki francais.

la situation pourrai etre la même pour un russe qui écrit sur wikipedia en francais et source avec des sources russes.

grosso modo, si je suis réverté, comme il est difficile de dėbattre dans une langue qui n'est pas la notre, on laisse le révert. Si il y a trop de réverts, on ne contribue plus.

je ne vois pas comment améliorer ça. mais je pense que c'est mesurable.

Ce n'est pas le fait d'avoir été réverté et par qui, on s'en fout. C'est la situation qui est bizarre quand elle est vécue. Cette impression d'etre accueilli dans une wikipedia, et rejetée d'une autre alors même que la personne n'a pas changé (et son type de contribution non plus).

Le problème est encore plus important du fait que wiki en est une wikipedia DEPUIS laquelle les articles sont traduits ensuite vers d'autres langues un peu comme le centre d'une toile d'araignėe. Hors je ne pense pas que les petits articles(bout de la toile) soient traduits vers la wiki en. Je suppose que la plupart du temps, ça va de l'intérieur vers l'extérieur de la toile. (grosses langues vers petites langues ). Donc je pense qu'il est important que des gens de petites langue puissent écrire sur "wiki en" pour l'enrichir.

Bref. Je ne sais pas si ce problème est valable pour wiki fr aussi. Seul un étranger le saurait.

Comme c'est ton job l'accueil, je pointait juste un exemple de problème, qui pourrai être évalué pour estimer si il y a besoin d'une action ou non. Wikiscan indique le pourcentage de revert par exemple. Comparer les pourcentages de reverts sur les différentes wikipedia, voir même sur les différents projets pourrai être un indice vraiment interessant pour vous. Je veux dire que les gens sont découragés par les réverts et les conflits. Un révert peut être une bonne chose. Mais si on considère les contributions comme une continuité, soit je ne suis pas assez réverté sur wiki fr, soit je suis trop réverté sur wiki en.

Bref, j'espère que tu aura compris la bizarreté que je pointe. Je pense que c'est mesurable.

Je ne sais pas vraiment la cause par contre. Si c'est mon anglais qui est horrible, ils devraient reformuler en belle phrase au lieu de reverter. Je suis un panneau fluo quand j'écris anglais peut être, et ça dis frappez moi?

Pour des idées d'amélioration, il pourrai y avoir accès au taux de revert de la wikipedia principale de la personne par exemple, pour les patrouilleurs et quelque chose qui indiquerai que ce n'est pas "sa wikipedia principale/sa wikipedia de langue native".

Vatadoshu^french 21:37, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

l'impression esf peut être d'autant plus frappante, qu'en général, j'ai mis presque la même contribution sur l'article wiki fr 2 minutes auparavant sans révert. Vatadoshu^french 21:52, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Bonjour Vatadoshu

De manière générale, la « bonne pratique » est d'expliquer à la personne ce qui n'a pas été bien fait. Ce n'est pas toujours fait. La communauté francophone a mis en place des bonnes pratiques, qui semblent porter leurs fruits. Je ne sais pas s'il existe la même chose sur la Wikipédia anglophone.

Je vais transmettre ton retour à l'équipe Growth avec qui je travaille : leur but est d'améliorer l'accueil sur les Wikipédia de taille moyenne. De bonnes pratiques concernant l'accueil des nouveaux ont également été publiées dans le cadre de leur mission.

Il ne faut pas oublier non plus que certains projets sont plus actifs que d'autres suivant les wikis. Le projet Médecine sur Wikipédia en anglais est très actif. Ce n'est peut-être pas le cas chez les francophones.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:57, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

ok. Vatadoshu^french 18:41, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Thread for your attention

Trizek, I noticed that you contribute to Growth Team Features talk page on a fairly regular basis. There's an active thread now which, in my opinion, will benefit from contribution on your part as a WMF employee. Thank you. Thread: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#Some_newcomers_need_a_lot_more_attention 188.66.34.165 (talk) 18:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice! I'm just back from vacation, so I'm catching up, one wiki at the time. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Benoit, thank you for paying attention to it. I have proposed a few things in a separate thread, please take a look: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Growth_Team_features#Broader_view_of_the_problem_and_a_small_poll — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.66.32.27 (talk) 18:13, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. As I watch the Growth talk page, I actually spotted your message there before reading your message here. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Mentorship

Would you have an issue with me rejoining the list of mentors? I had paused my involvement due to a break from Wikipedia but it extended past the time allotted for and I felt I needed more time. Editor retention and education is important to me. Wikipedia has given me so much over the years, even before I joined as an editor. I read three to four times as much as I edit. I am believe strongly in the pillars of the community, primarily civility in discussion and kindness in our interactions, especially with those we may disagree with. I wasn't sure if I could just go back an re-add my name or not so I thought best to just ask. --ARoseWolf 15:24, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello @ARoseWolf

You rejoining the list is up to English Wikipedia's guidances regarding mentorship. And as I read them, I don't see why you can't rejoin. We are all humans, so it is normale to take a break time to time. :)

If you rejoin, and need to take a break, we recently added some features to Special:MentorDashboard (a page mentors have access to) in order to mark yourself as away (this redirects your mentees to other mentors with a notice) or to diminish the number of question you might receive. This way, you can regulate your workload regarding helping newcomers.

Thank you for your interest in helping others! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback discussions

Hi Trizek! I saw you started the recent feedback discussion on a few different places. For next time, it might be helpful to just use one central location and {{Please see}} invites to everywhere else, as this makes it easier to keep track of everything. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Given your reply after @Folly Mox, @Novem Linguae, and others separately raised the same concern, I'm going to have to be a little more direct.

The forking guideline was developed by consensus because it helps to facilitate discussion, and it's something that all editors are expected to follow. Not doing so after being notified of it would be considered a form of disruptive editing.

That said, if you're finding that {{Please see}} is not being effective, there are a few steps you can take. The first is to use the |heading= and |more= parameters to improve (concisely) the invitation. Editors are more likely to click on an invite if it communicates to us what the discussion is about. The second is to craft a good edit summary that links to the discussion, e.g. Invite to [[Link to discussion|discussion on topic]], as this allows us to navigate to it directly from our watchlist. Lastly, if a discussion is really needing more participation, there's the {{Bump}} template, which can be used in moderation.

I know that sometimes you care about which constituency an editor giving feedback is from — in those cases, it'd be fine by me to ask editors to identify where they saw the invite. But fundamentally, centralizing discussion is something that we ask for (and in several cases here have done for you) not only because it helps us keep track of them more easily, but also because it saves us effort when we can just +1 what others have said rather than typing out a point someone else already made elsewhere.

We do really appreciate you seeking out our feedback, and I hope that this helps more, not less, effective. Best, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:43, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I saw your message after replying to everyone. While I was replying to it, providing the same explanation, when I got the new notification about your message above.

I'm not here to disturb communities' best practices; on the contrary, I will follow them whenever I can. What I often miss (which is true at all wikis, and which is also true towards newcomers) is the context. Several users advised me to use the {{Please see}} template the next time, and I will. What I missed there was the information regarding the community consensus: no one explained it to me and hence I didn't knew how important it was.

It is a new observation of what I think is a recurring issue: this informal knowledge (that differs from wiki to wiki) makes things complicated to apprehend when you edit. Not being aware of a decision taken years ago or one documented on a very specific but impossible-to-find page makes it easy to loose "reputation points" on wiki! :)

Fortunately, you took time to explain it to me, even if being more direct and firm was not necessary: it is just bad timing! ;)

While I prefer to follow communities' best practices, and I prefer by far centralized discussions as they are way much easier to follow, I still look for efficiency. But as explained, I often see less community engagement when I drop a link to participate to a discussion, hence my application of "WP:IAR and let's go": I post everywhere relevant, all in good faith. This time the topic I started is popular and drags a lot of replies, which is great. Previous discussions I started, with the same message posted at several places, were not as popular. It might explain why I never heard of your community's consensus regarding centralized discussions and hence never applied it.

So, thank you for your clarification and your will to help, I really appreciate it. I hope that these few lines also help you to understand the challenges I face. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and no worries!

Talk forking is something that I see happen accidentally in good faith all the time, and I think it's certainly worth exploring whether there are ways to educate about it better. The best intervention would be directly within the software as one is attempting to make a fork. It occurs to me that the new topic tool might be able to detect e.g. starting two discussions with the same header in quick succession and provide a warning; I'll suggest that as a feature to the talk pages project folks. Beyond that, I added a very brief mention of it a while back to the newcomer tutorial here, but there might be other places to put it that might be more likely to be seen (it's tricky, since whenever we add info it has to compete with all the other info already there). It also looks like there isn't currently any user warning template for it; I'll try to craft one with some friendly language at {{uw-fork}} (the user warning system has some problems with stigma and with generic language due largely to Twinkle's inability to handle customization, but it's still useful to build it out). Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Trizek I certainly hope I didn't step on your toes when I merged the three discussions. Holding discussions in a single place is so ingrained here that I never considered until seeing your reply above that it might be a cultural variation. It's not a manoeuvre I've personally performed before, but it kinda felt like it has the force of policy. Hoping everyone can continue participating at the centralised location; I think it's an important conversation to have and ideas cross-pollinated more easily when we're all in the same room. Blessings, Folly Mox (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox, on the contrary! Thank you for this move: it makes everyone's life easier. I prefer centralized discussions, but I sometimes have no other choice than posting the same thing at multiple places, to attract attention. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

A solstice greeting

❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️

Hi Benoît! I'd like to wish you a splendid solstice season as we wrap up the year. Here is an artwork, made individually for you, to celebrate. Looking forward to collaborating with you on the development of Edit check in the coming year! Take care, and thanks for all you do to make Wikipedia better!

Cheers,
{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk

Solstice Celebration for Trizek (WMF), 2023, DALL·E 3.

(View full series)

Note: The vibes are winter solsticey. If you're in the southern hemisphere, oops, apologies.

{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:08, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Trizek (WMF)!

Happy New Year!

Trizek (WMF),Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Dantus21 (talk) 00:14, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Thank you for all your work on the Wikimedia Foundation! Although it was a while ago, I still appreciate the kindness you showed me here Dantus21 (talk) 00:17, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

@Dantus21, I'm terribly sorry. I'm not often around, and I just discovered your message. Thank you again for your support, I really appreciate!

Happy remaining 2024 months! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Growth Mentorship - Checking inactive mentors

I noticed something interesting when going through the user talks of one of the mentors in the growth's mentorship program. They had not responded to any mentee questions for a few months. About half the questions were pretty unrelated to Wikipedia editing, but the other half was actually reasonable questions.

What measures does the growth team have in place to check when mentors are active/inactive? It feels like a flaw in the system's design if someone can just sign up and be left there permanently if they never remove themselves. Soni (talk) 07:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Soni, thank you for your message.

You can check on Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list (or Special:ManageMentors) to see how active a mentor is. From these pages, any admin can set a mentor as away (on pause), or remove them from the list. Mentees will automatically be reassigned to active mentors.

Like for any other role, it is up to the community to keep an eye on what others do. If you have suggestion, let me know how could we improve on the current workflow. :)

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I like to call out problems when I see them. It's usually more effective than trying to convince everyone about my specific solutions to things. In this case, I think you run the risk of the project effectively "dying" from inactivity, simply because not enough people are doing checks to make sure the mentors are actually active/the mentees are being answered.

I know I used to be on a Teahouse mentor list or something a while ago when an automated system removed me for inactivity. It seems like a simple system, "Dont edit for N weeks, get a talk page notification and an auto-removal that you can revert manually". That would take care of mentors who are plain retired or similar.

For the other problem, it's a bit trickier. I know there's help templates or similar, where any user can type {{helpme|question}} and the template does interesting things (including keep a list of all unanswered questions, so mentors can go flip a parameter to mark it as answered). I think something like this is worth considering, rigging the mentorship messages to be triggered using a template. At the smallest, it could allow for quick categorisation and editors to "patrol" for unanswered questions that remain weeks without a reply. At the largest, you could actively get useful data back from the categorisation. I know there is very little useful info from "How many mentorship questions are actually useful", which could be solved by a single template parameter. And more.

Ultimately, I do not have a strong preference for which solution, just that the current situation has a sustainable in from the community. Hence my suggestions.As long as "any" solution works at this, it's a good way forward. Soni (talk) 21:20, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

It is possible to setup a similar system to Teahouse, to check on inactive users. It could be done, as the list of mentors is publicly editable. And to refill the list, we are considering creating a notification that would be triggered when you reach a certain number of edits and a certain tenure.

From experience, I don't believe most users use templates like {{helpme}} to find a mentor or assistance, or to fill a request in. It is not how things work anymore, as more users will follow a direct contact link or fill a form. But I digress. Categorizing talk pages topics is a big project, but it would be easier to achieve with all the improvements made recently with discussion tools, and some proper time allocated to work on it.

We also considered offering a set of pre-filled answers to the mentors, so that they can respond quicker the the same recurring questions. But it is a double-edged sword, as efficient engagement needs a hand-crafted answer.

For mentorship, I believe that sustainability is a combination of WMF efforts to provide tools that are editable by users, and community effort to adopt these tools and set processes. As not every wiki has the skills to setup bots, I'll document the idea of checking if mentors are still active bu dropping a message at their talk page.

Thank you for the suggestions! :) Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 18:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh I was not suggesting you use helpme specifically. What I understood from how the Mentorship Dashboard worked, you basically gave a quick-link to the mentor's userpage, so mentees could just submit their question in the box that opened up.

So if you wanted a quick categorisation way instead of trying to go with very fancy bells and whistles, someone could use or adapt the helpme template. Instead of mentee's edits making a new section titled "Question from Username123" and just their message, it could be the section, their message and a simple template. I don't know the cost/benefit for it for the mentor's workflows, but it could give you useful categorised info based on how the template is. A very simple "How many questions asked by the average mentee are irrelevant" is a useful thing to learn, but there would be more. Soni (talk) 18:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)