This is a task for building one of the modules in the newcomer homepage: the mentorship module.
Main audience: Users who are looking for personalized help.
Primary targeted persona(s): Helena (Joiner-Inner); Yankov (Knowledge Sharer)
Secondary persona(s): Mina (Box Checker); Jae-Hee (Social Changer)
Invision mockups: https://wikimedia.invisionapp.com/share/KUQV2QDJ8A7#/350928124_NH-Mentorship_Module (in places where the mockups and the specifications on this task disagree, the specifications take precedent.)
Summary: We know from research that "human-to-human" help can be one of the best methods to engage newcomers. By being helped by another experienced editor, newcomers can ask their exact question, learn that a vibrant community exists, and develop a potential longer-term connection to the community all at once. In this module, we want to follow a similar model to the French Wikipedia community, which assigns an experienced editor to each newcomer randomly, and then automatically sends them a message "from" their mentor greeting them and saying they are available for questions. This module will appear for all newcomers, give the name of their mentor chosen randomly from a list, some basic information about the mentor, and a short message. When the newcomer clicks on a call to action to ask a question, they will go to the mentor's talk page to ask a question.
Specifications for initial version
- General
- This module should be present for all newcomers, regardless of whether they checked the box for getting contacted by a mentor on the welcome survey. That box will regulate which newcomers receive mentorship emails.
- Assigning mentors
- Mentors should sign up on a wiki page by adding a link to their userpage to a list, similar to French Wikipedia. We may want to recommend that the community protect this page. (technical note: a link will be easier to work with than an unlinked username).
- Communities are asked to produce their own signup pages via T218237.
- Czech: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Pot%C5%99ebuji_pomoc/Mento%C5%99i
- Korean: (forthcoming)
- Vietnamese: (forthcoming)
- When a newcomer views their homepage, they should have a mentor assigned to them that will continue to be their mentor each time they view the page. It is worth noting that this will need to be the same mentor as the one listed in an email, once we are sending engagement emails to users (even if the user has not visited their homepage before viewing the email). Also worth noting is the possibility that future features may also need to draw upon these mentorship relationships, whether or not the user has visited their homepage or received an email.
- Each mentor should be assigned to the newcomers such that no mentor is assigned to too many.
- We will need to be able to run analysis on which mentors are assigned to which newcomers. (technical note: this could be stored as a hidden user preference).
- If, at the time of account creation, the page listing mentors contains no valid mentors, or is inaccessible, the mentorship module should not be present on the homepage.
- If a mentor's name is removed from the page, we should stop assigning them to newcomers. Newcomers that already have those mentors assigned should keep them.
- Copy and links
- Title: "Your mentor"
- Section 1: mentor identity
- Shows the mentor's username along with a gray person avatar. The username and avatar should link to the mentor's user page in a new tab.
- Under the username, it should say the number of edits they have on that wiki and the date of the most recent edit in terms of "active days ago", like: "37,243 edits. Active 2 days ago." If their most recent edit was yesterday, it should say "Active yesterday". If their most recent was today, it should say, "Active today."
- Next, display the text, "This experienced user knows you're new and can help you with editing."
- Under that text should be the button that reads, "Ask your mentor a question"
- Under the button should be a line that reads, "View your mentor's conversations." That whole sentence should be a link to the mentor's talk page that opens in a new tab.
- Asking a question
- When a user clicks the button to ask their mentor a question, they should be presented with a modal, which follows the same essential workflow as the modal for asking a question via the help module. The modal has two screens.
- Screen 1: asking the question and email configuration
- Title: "Ask your mentor"
- Section 1: "When you ask a question, it gets posted publicly under your username, "[USERNAME]", to your mentor's talk page, which is where they can find and respond to your question." The text that reads "your mentor's talk page" should be a link to the mentor's talk page. That link should open in a new tab.
- Section 2: this should contain the exact same workflow and business rules for viewing/adding/confirming an email address that exists in the help panel. It should contain the exact same language, which is applicable in both contexts.
- Section 3: this should be the exact same question-asking box with same header and business rules as in the help panel.
- There should not be an option to "Include page title with my question", since that is not applicable on the homepage.
- This screen should have a "Post my question" button that is inactive unless there is text in the question box. This button posts to the mentor's talk page and advances the modal to "Screen 2".
- This screen should have a "Cancel" button.
- Screen 2: success
- Title: "Ask your mentor"
- Section 1: "Your question has been posted!" should be displayed in the same style, and preceded by the same checkmark as in the help panel.
- Section 2: "Your question is now on your mentor's talk page, which is where they will answer it as soon as they can."
- Section 3: "You will receive an email notification when a response is posted, likely within a day or so." This language should be modified according to the user's email status, in the same way as the help panel.
- Section 4: if this is the user's first edit, they should receive the congratulations message in the same way as the help panel.
- Section 5: "View your question on your mentor's talk page." This should be a link anchored to the header of the new question.
- This screen should have a "Done" button.
- On the mentor's talk page
- New questions should be posted as new sections on the mentor's user talk page.
- They should have automatically-generated headers that read like, "Question from [USERNAME] (22:34, 27 February 2019)". The [USERNAME] should link to the user page of the mentee.
- They should be automatically signed by the newcomer, like with the help panel.
- These questions should be saved with the edit tag, "Mentorship module question".
- Note: the "Your recent questions" section is included in the mockups, but is not part of the specifications for the initial version. See T218841 for development of this capability.
Potential future specifications, listed for planning purposes
Add the "Your recent questions" capability to easily link users to their questions and responses. See T218841 for this capability.- We may want to give different configurations of the module to newcomers who do and do not check the mentorship box on the welcome survey. The idea is that those who did not check the box may still need an opportunity to control their mentorship experience. This distinction may mean that the module includes the opt-in button, or maybe it gives them a choice of mentors (see next bullet).
- Instead of assigning a single mentor to newcomers, we may want to allow them to choose from three or four choices of mentors. They could choose by viewing User pages, or perhaps we could list topics of interest or a message from each mentor. This gives the user some control over the beginning of their mentorship experience.
- We may want to build more structure around a mentorship program, perhaps with features that allow mentors to see which newcomers they are assigned to, and to monitor those newcomers' work. (technical note: this would require a new table for performance).
- Allow mentors to configure parts of what the newcomer sees on their homepage, such as a personal message or avatar, e.g. "My name is User123 and my favorite topics are sports and music. I love to help newcomers get started!" (technical note: this might be easier to administer through a user preference than through a wiki page).
- If a mentor's name is removed from the page listing mentors, we could assign the user a new mentor when they click the call-to-action to ask a question. Or we could direct the user to the help desk.
- We could base this module around (or add) the "Email this user" feature, instead of relying on talk page communication. This feature is only available to users who have a confirmed email address.
- Instead of having users ask the question in a modal, maybe there is a way to take them to the mentor's talk page and use a GuidedTour to take them through posting their question.
- In the listing describing a mentor, it might be more compelling to newcomers to say how many newcomers their mentor has helped, instead of how many edits they have or how long their Wikipedia tenure has been. This might be calculated by the number of distinct newcomers that the mentor has interacted with, or perhaps just the number who have asked questions to the mentor, which may be easier to calculate. Other things we could list might include how long the mentor has been a user, or a more accurate measure of "recent activity" that could combine edits with login date or the date they last read an echo notification.
In the modal for asking a question, we may want to illustrate to newcomers how to check their notifications to receive their response, perhaps by indicating it with a GuidedTour addition. See T220146 for this capability.- After a newcomer has a certain amount of experience (e.g. 1,000 edits), the mentorship module could ask them if they are interested in becoming a mentor, and then could convert over into a module design useful for when you are a mentor.
