Request Status: New Request
Request Type: project support request
Related OKRs:

Request Title: Scaling of link suggestions service

• Request Description: In May 2021, the Growth team deployed the "add a link" structured task, which uses a machine learning service to suggest words and phrases that should be turned into wikilinks on Wikipedia articles. In the year since its deployment, it has proven to be a popular feature with newcomers that statistically increases their likelihood to make constructive edits, and it is accepted by communities. The machine learning was created by the Research team, and the service was built by the Growth team. The machine learning models have since been taken over by the Machine Learning team, but the storing, loading, and management of link suggestions remains with the Growth team. We want the Platform teams to take over this service for two reasons:
  • Coverage. The model takes seconds to score each article. This means that we don't score all articles in a wiki; rather we score just enough to supply the suggested edits feed on the newcomer homepage. If we were able to score all articles in a wiki, we would be able to offer the feature in a totally different way: we could push edit suggestions to users as they are reading articles, which would result in many more new editors working at higher volume.
  • Availability/maintenance. The Growth team is not well-suited to maintain this service or expose it for other builders to use. We would like the service to be available to more people, and for us to recoup our bandwidth to work on other priorities.
• Indicate Priority Level: High
• Main Requestors: Growth and Editing teams
• Ideal Delivery Date: November 2022
• Stakeholders: Marshall Miller, Kosta Harlan, Peter Pelberg

Request Documentation