Page MenuHomePhabricator

Growth's "48 hour" newcomer notifications: end A/B test experiment & release changes
Closed, ResolvedPublic3 Estimated Story Points

Description

User Story:

As the Growth team, I want to conclude the current notifications experiment so that we can release the most effective versions of the notifications.

Details:

GrowthExperiments sends a notification to (most) new account holders at 48 hours. These notifications were originally developed improve engagement as part of the feature Positive_reinforcement#Levelling_up.

Notification2023 audience2023 copy2025 audience2025 copy (T400118)
Get started0 suggested edits and less edits than max*Try a suggested edit and start building your editing skills0 editsCurious about editing Wikipedia? your knowledge joins a community reaching millions.
Re-engage0 suggested edits, at least 1 edit and less edits than max*Thanks for editing. Try suggested edits to develop new skills, and learn about best practices
Keep going1 suggested edit and less than max*You’ve made X suggested edits. Keep going to learn more new skills.1 suggested edit and less edits than max*Great progress on your edits! Keep exploring more suggestions to grow your skills.

*The maximum is defined by GELevelingUpGetStartedMaxTotalEdits for both the 2023 get started notification and the 2025 re-enage and by GELevelingUpKeepGoingNotificationThresholdsMaximum for the keep going one.

Decision:

The experiment design tested multiple variables simultaneously, which made it difficult to interpret the results precisely. However, after reviewing the data with Product Analytics, I recommend the following actions:

  • Get started: move forward with the new (2025) audience and copy!
  • Re-engage: move forward with the new (2025) audience and copy!
  • Keep Going: revert to the previous (2023) language for the “Keep Going” notification. It seems that perhaps people appreciated the slight personalization: “You’ve made X suggested edits. Keep going to learn more new skills.”
Acceptance Criteria:
  • Review superset dashboard with Product Analytics and @Sgs
  • Decide on any iterative changes necessary
  • Update notifications as defined above & remove any temporary code
  • Release changes to all users on all Wikipedias (with GrowthExperiment enabled)
  • End experiment

Event Timeline

KStoller-WMF moved this task from Backlog to Current Quarter Backlog on the Growth-Team board.
KStoller-WMF renamed this task from Decision and release planning: A/B test experiment for leveling up notifications to Growth's "48 hour" newcomer notifications: end A/B test experiment & release changes.Nov 7 2025, 6:16 PM
KStoller-WMF raised the priority of this task from Medium to High.
KStoller-WMF updated the task description. (Show Details)
KStoller-WMF updated Other Assignee, removed: Sgs.

Change #1206927 had a related patch set uploaded (by Cyndywikime; author: Cyndywikime):

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Implement changes for newcomer notifications

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1206927

Change #1207133 had a related patch set uploaded (by Cyndywikime; author: Cyndywikime):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] [Growth]:Remove GELevelingUpNewNotificationsEnabled config

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1207133

Change #1207134 had a related patch set uploaded (by Cyndywikime; author: Cyndywikime):

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Remove leveling up notifications experiment code

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1207134

Change #1207134 abandoned by Cyndywikime:

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Remove leveling up notifications experiment code

Reason:

Code has been squashed into 677e710b74e8619ef26a3e6d668b8a840b61c5dd

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1207134

Should we keep tracking the notifications CTRs (or maybe a simplified version with just an aggregated CTR including primary and secondary links)? The development cost is almost none, building the dashboard seems the more time consuming. cc @KStoller-WMF

I would love to have access to a dashboard for monitoring notification engagement!
But sounds like we should not include that within the scope of this task? I added: T410544: Dashboard for tracking CTR for Growth's "48 hour" newcomer notifications

I would love to have access to a dashboard for monitoring notification engagement!
But sounds like we should not include that within the scope of this task? I added: T410544: Dashboard for tracking CTR for Growth's "48 hour" newcomer notifications

Indeed, for now, we'll stop the experiment instrumentation and re-enble when we have the time to work on T410544, which I would like rather soon than late to not loose the momentum. This is also something I would add to the hypothesis wrap up.

Change #1206927 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Implement changes for newcomer notifications

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1206927

Change #1207133 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] [Growth]:Remove GELevelingUpNewNotificationsEnabled config

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1207133

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-12-08T15:03:58Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1216196|niawiktionary: update wordmark, sitename and projectnamespace (T411850)]], [[gerrit:1216226|shnwiki: add draft namespace (T411965)]], [[gerrit:1207133|[Growth]:Remove GELevelingUpNewNotificationsEnabled config (T407431)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-12-08T15:06:07Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> cyndywikime, urbanecm, anzx: Backport for [[gerrit:1216196|niawiktionary: update wordmark, sitename and projectnamespace (T411850)]], [[gerrit:1216226|shnwiki: add draft namespace (T411965)]], [[gerrit:1207133|[Growth]:Remove GELevelingUpNewNotificationsEnabled config (T407431)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-12-08T15:12:47Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1216196|niawiktionary: update wordmark, sitename and projectnamespace (T411850)]], [[gerrit:1216226|shnwiki: add draft namespace (T411965)]], [[gerrit:1207133|[Growth]:Remove GELevelingUpNewNotificationsEnabled config (T407431)]] (duration: 08m 49s)