Extension:GrowthExperiments
The GrowthExperiments extension provides newcomer features, such as a homepage with suggested tasks and finding mentors. It is developed by the Growth team for use on Wikimedia Foundation sites. The extension includes:
- a survey during registration
- some improvements to registration confirmation emails
- a homepage for inexperienced users with various helpful features, which also serves as an entry point for most other functionality
- showing a custom signup page to users who arrive through an outreach campaign
- suggesting easy tasks with guidance to new users, including some structured editing experiences based on suggested links and suggested images
- a help panel for suggested tasks and for generic editing, providing information and allowing communication with an assigned mentor
- features for mentors to better support newcomers
- showing information to new users about the impact they are making on the wiki
Integrations
GrowthExperiments integrates with the following extensions:
Hard dependencies
These dependencies are required to install GrowthExperiments.
| Extension | Description |
|---|---|
| CommunityConfiguration | to allow administrators to customise the extension based on their needs |
| VisualEditor | for a better editing experience when doing suggested tasks |
Soft dependencies
These extensions are optional, but the behaviour of GrowthExperiments without those extensions present is not heavily tested.
| Extension | Description |
|---|---|
| CentralAuth | to exclude locked users from the Mentor dashboard |
| CirrusSearch | for various search features used during suggested tasks |
| ConfirmEdit | TBD |
| Echo | for informing new users and mentors about various opportunities |
| EventBus | to inform Add Image infrastructure about user decisions about recommendations |
| EventLogging | to log user interaction for analysis purposes |
| Flow | for messaging features ("ask help" dialog on the homepage and in the help panel) when the target page is a Flow page |
| GuidedTour | to guide new users through the interface |
| MobileFrontend | for showing a mobile-optimized version of various features |
| PageImages | for getting the thumbnails showing in the "Surfacing structured tasks"-experiment |
| PageViewInfo | for various interface elements trying to explain the user's current or potential impact, most notably the "impact" module on Special:Homepage |
| Thanks | to compute the number of Thanks received in User impact data |
| TextExtracts | for getting an extract from an article when the descriptions from Wikibase (see above) or Wikibase itself are not available. Also for use in the "Surfacing structured tasks"-experiment |
| UniversalLanguageSelector | for language selection in the post-registration survey |
| Wikibase | for getting the descriptions showing in the "Surfacing structured tasks"-experiment |
| WikimediaMessages | to populate the list of topics in Suggested edits |
Web APIs
The extension also uses some web APIs which are probably unavailable for non-Wikimedia wikis:
- Page Content Service for displaying task card information such as a description and an image
- Analytics Query Service for interface elements related to impact (this is abstracted away via the PageViewInfo extension on the server-side, but for client-side features that's not always possible)
- Add Link for link recommendation tasks
- Add Image for image recommendation tasks
Installation
To download GrowthExperiments:
git clone "https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments" extensions/GrowthExperiments
Read the developer setup documentation for further configuration required.
Development
- Extension:GrowthExperiments/developer setup
- Extension:GrowthExperiments/Technical documentation
- Quickstart with MediaWiki Docker: see MediaWiki-Docker/Extension/GrowthExperiments.
| This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page. |
