User story & summary:
Task-specific user story:
As the Growth team’s Product Manager, I aim to ensure we engage with communities early and consistently throughout the product development cycle. Gathering feedback at each stage helps us expose risks and create better outcomes by building with the community.
High-level project-specific user story:
As a newcomer to Wikipedia, I want to receive suggestions that help me identify and improve non-neutral language in articles so that I can make constructive contributions that align with Wikipedia’s MOS, encyclopedic tone, and neutrality standards.
Guiding Key Result: WE1.1: Increase constructive edits (edits that are not reverted within 48 hours of being published) for editors with less than 100 cumulative edits.
Project description:
This project aims to support newcomers by introducing a new Structured Tasks that focuses on identifying and improving non-neutral language in articles. Specifically, it will highlight sentences that contain peacock terms, puffery, promotional language, or other wording that conflicts with Wikipedia’s policies on neutrality and encyclopedic tone.
Powered by the Machine Learning “Tone” model (formerly called the “Peacock” model), with UX that builds upon the Edit Check UI, this Structured Task will highlight instances of biased language and offer in-context guidance to help users rewrite a sentence in a more encyclopedic tone. The goal is to encourage constructive, policy-aligned contributions while helping newcomers build confidence and awareness of core content standards.
This work builds on the Growth team’s broader strategy to lower barriers to editing through Structured Tasks. In Q1, we aim to release a beta version to lay the groundwork for future experiments evaluating the task’s impact on newcomer contributions and the scalability of Edit Check as a foundation for Suggested Edits.
Project-level Hypothesis:
If we provide newer editors with a Suggested Edit that highlight instances of non-neutral language or improper tone, and offer built-in guidance to rewrite with a more encyclopedic tone, then newer editors will be more likely to make constructive contributions that align with Wikipedia’s policies, while building confidence and awareness of core content standards.
Background & research:
Writing in a neutral tone is a pillar of Wikipedia. Writing in a neutral tone is also a practice many new volunteers find to be unintuitive. An October 2024 analysis of the new content edits newer volunteers published to English Wikipedia found:
- 56% of the new content edits newer volunteers published contained peacock words.
- 22% of the new content edits newer volunteers published that contained peacock words were reverted
New content edits containing peacock words were 46.7% more likely to be reverted than new content edits without peacock words
Edit_check/Tone_Check#Background
Suggested Edits help new account holders get started editing:
- Growth’s Suggested Edits (Newcomer Tasks) increase the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%) Newcomer_tasks/Experiment_analysis,_November_2020
- Structured Tasks (a type of Suggested Edit) can support newcomer activation and retention:
- “Add a Link” increases the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+16.6% over baseline) and the probability that they are retained as newcomers (+16.2% over baseline). Add_a_link/Experiment_analysis,_December_2021
- “Add an Image” increases the likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline), and the likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline). Add_an_image/Experiment_analysis,_March_2024
- 2025 English Wikipedia Add a Link analysis: T382603: Add a link (Structured task): English Wikipedia A/B test & Experiment Analysis (FY24/25 WE1.2.11)
Acceptance Criteria:
- Create a succinct communications plan to share this work with communities.
- Support Product Ambassadors in their work sharing ideas and collecting feedback.