User story & summary:

As an experienced editor on English Wikipedia, I want the "Add a link" task released gradually, because I want to test the impact of the feature without overloading patrollers.

As a newcomer on English Wikipedia, I want access to easy first editing tasks that are structured and help me learn gradually, because I need a chance to gradually learn policies, editing norms, and how to edit.

Background & research:

We have released the "Add a link" Structured task to most Wikipedias as enabled. We feel confident in doing this as we've conducted several A/B tests that show this task is helping new editors get started:

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Structured_tasks/Add_an_image/Experiment_analysis,_March_2024
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Structured_tasks/Add_a_link/Experiment_analysis,_December_2021
• We have also run an experiment for just enwiki newcomers: T382603: Add a link (Structured task): English Wikipedia A/B test & Experiment Analysis (FY24/25 WE1.2.11)

However, we recognize that patrollers are sometimes frustrated with these tasks. We've outlined patroller feedback and some of the improvements we've completed to address concerns: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Structured_tasks/Community_feedback

Many Wikipedias have concluded that the benefits to newcomer retention outweigh the additional workload for patrollers. However, on larger projects like English Wikipedia, we are engaging with communities before enabling the task and allowing them to decide how and when to proceed.

In response to English Wikipedia community requests, we are also implementing several key changes to improve the "Add a link" task:T389288: [Epic] Add a Link (Structured Task): Improvements to address community feedback (WE1.2.16, FY24/25)

Once these improvements are live, we aim to roll out the task more broadly, ideally accelerating beyond the current 5% increments, as each rollout step requires additional engineering and testing.

Previous rollout tasks:

• T382382: Add a link (Structured task): Increase rollout on English Wikipedia to 5%
• T384551: Add a link (Structured task): Increase rollout on English Wikipedia to 10%
• T386029: Add a link (Structured task): Increase rollout on English Wikipedia to 15%
• T388289: Add a link (Structured task): Increase rollout on English Wikipedia to 20%

Acceptance Criteria:

• Movement Communications or Product to check in w/ Community and set percentage for rollout
• Engineering to increase rollout to: 100% of ALL users.
• Movement Communications or Product to follow up w/ Community after change