Change #1226200 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nik Gkountas; author: Nik Gkountas):

[mediawiki/extensions/ContentTranslation@master] Starter kit demo

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1226200

6 March 2026 Update

In Q2 last year, we began exploring the concept of a Wikipedia starter kit, a language lifecycle sensitive approach that will provide  Wikipedia administrators with essential tasks, tools and resources for growing a language community. Over the last few weeks, we achieved a significant milestone in brainstorming potential designs at a team offsite, and refining those to create mockups for the starter kit dashboard and a main page customization feature. This weekend, we had an opportunity to share more about this work at the Language Community meeting more about this work and engage attendees in discussions around the designs. Summary of the feedback received included:

What language communities liked

“This starter kit looks amazing.”
“I like the Wiki health dashboard.”
“Glad to see the starter kit coming to life. It will now be easier for new language contributors to contribute in the Incubator more effectively.”
“Page creation is simpler with the kit.”
“I think it was great, especially how it will make it easy for people to customize their wiki homepages, which is quite difficult to do manually.”

Suggestions/questions
“Mostly homepage customization is limited to interface admins only, but if it’s open to everyone, it could lead to absolute vandalism.”
“If a user has to use this tool, they need to know what they need so the user can focus on the content, minimizing the steps used.”
“I like the policy pages, but how would it allow mass editing?”
“There is this design pattern that is used in Wikipedia; maybe the tool can match those colors.”
"Is the Starter Kit being functional for alternative writing systems (e.g., RTL scripts)."
“HotCat is one important gadget that helps to add categories. This is the main one I would like to see added.”
“It would be great if the Starter Kit is mobile-friendly.”
“Is this ok to use in the Incubator, especially when the language project is still small?
"Adding tools in the starter kit for example Capacity exchange tool"

Photo: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Starter_Kit_Presentation_at_the_Language_Community_Meeting_(February_2026).png

Change #1226200 abandoned by Nikerabbit:

[mediawiki/extensions/ContentTranslation@master] Starter kit demo

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1226200

20 March 2026 Update

• Concluded an early impact assessment for the Starter Kit T418031. Thanks to @cchen for helping with these early assessments.
• For the main page customization feature, we started working on adding template transclusion support to fetch Starter kit templates from test.wikipedia.org, recreate them as pages on the target wiki, and then publish the main page: https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/lpl/starterkit-v1/-/merge_requests/3
• We also drafted an internal technical plan covering goals, workflow, and implementation for the pilot phase. The current approach includes a Vue 3 frontend, a Node.js + Express API backend, a lightweight SQLite database, OAuth 1.0a for authentication, and deployment on Toolforge.
• In parallel, work has been ongoing to deploy the main page customization feature on Toolforge, with plans to test it with communities in the coming weeks. To prepare for this, the focus in the upcoming week will be on localizing the Starter kit, refining the UX flow to support creating, saving, and publishing templates in phases, and addressing any bugs that come up during testing.
• The team also presented the Starter Kit designs at the monthly Language Diversity Hub meeting to gather feedback on how it can best support new and smaller language communities. Overall, the response was very positive, and it was encouraging to see interest in how this could support language onboarding. Some of the feedback included making the selection of focus areas for main page customization even more intuitive, thinking through multilingual considerations, being mindful of policy translation challenges, and exploring ways communities can track growth through relevant metrics.

7 April 2026 Update

• Starter kit is currently being prepared for localization and added to Translatewiki.net. All user-facing strings have been extracted into i18n: T421456, T422182.
• Work is ongoing to address remaining bugs and UI/UX issues for the main page customization feature: T420418.
• An initial list of 11 wikis has been identified for testing the main page customization feature: Tongan, Central Kanuri, Nupe, Obolo, Southern Ndebele, Tigre, Mossi, Kusaal, and Pannonian Rusyn: T420075. These wikis represent a range of smaller language communities where the feature could be useful. Common issues include mobile responsiveness, missing or thin content, and design layout problems. The list was generated by reviewing the Incubator site creation log and includes mostly wikis created between 2023 and 2026. Additional conversations with the Language Diversity Hub considered communities currently participating in the mentorship program, such as Tibetan and Fulfulde. These communities will be approached for testing on April 13.
• In parallel, an initial wiki health framework and metrics for the starter kit were designed, with main page customization metrics mapped to this framework: T422571.

20 April 2026 Update

Kicked off work on the Activity & Growth section of the Starter kit dashboard, focusing on expandable cards that track wiki health and progress toward key milestones. An initial demo has been created, including active editors and article count metrics. Exploration continues on adding metrics such as new article count, deleted article count, top reader topics, and top editor topics.

4 May 2026 Update

Started community testing T420075#11751563 for the Starter Kit Main Page customization feature. Administrators from more than six communities, including Tyap Wikipedia, were contacted to validate the feature in real wiki environments. Tyap Wikipedia successfully tested the feature, published it to their Main Page, and shared feedback on the deployment process.

18 May 2026 Update

Starter Kit Main Page customization feature was tested in two additional language Wikipedias: Fulah and Jju.

A few highlights from the feedback received included:

• Wikipedia homepage configuration took less than 1.5 hours, compared to previously when it could take several weeks.
• The interface is friendly, and the whole process is easy, self-explanatory, and direct. It also supports participation from users with no background in coding or programming.
• Suggested improvements included:
  • Adding a pop-up notification or a dedicated page with brief guidelines and how-to information for users.
  • Providing the feature in additional languages to better engage communities in regions where English is not widely spoken or is not an official language.
  • Adding an article creation feature so that new editors do not have to struggle to find where to create new articles.

1 June 2026 Update

• Starter Kit Dashboard MVP was presented at the May 29th Language Community Meeting by @ngkountas & @ToluAyo. User:Kambai Akau shared their experience using the Starter Kit to customize the Main Page for the Jju and Tyap language communities.
• Feedback from testing the Main Page customization feature has been summarized at T420075
• Starter Kit MVP is coming along well: T420073. Testing rollout is planned for June 8th. Work has focused on the remaining pieces, including pending deployments, bug fixes, and testing. MVP Dashboard will cover a set of six essential tasks (T422214), an Activity & Growth component (T423407), and a Community & Collaboration component (T423409).

15 June 2026 Update

• A plan to gather feedback on the Starter Kit from selected administrators and communities was developed T428121. Potential participants included administrators who had actively participated in an earlier pilot to test one of the Starter Kit's initial features related to main page customization, along with 25 active administrators from approximately 22 wikis. Their feedback will help understand which parts of the Starter Kit are most useful, how effective the current guided tasks are, and what additional support would be valuable for onboarding and developing new wikis.
• An example of the outreach message shared with administrators from the selected communities is available here.

29 June 2026 Update

• Outreach efforts continued with follow-up messages encouraging contributors to share their feedback.
• So far, three contributors from the Nias, Igala, and Tyap language communities have provided feedback. Follow-up conversations are ongoing to better understand their experience using the Starter Kit and gather more detailed suggestions for improvement.
• Based on the issues identified during testing and the feedback received so far, work is underway to improve the Starter Kit experience: T430055. This includes unifying Starter Kit UI elements into a shared component and design token system, simplifying the main page customization workflow, adding impact dashboards to help us track Starter Kit progress, and surfacing required user permissions for completing essential tasks.

anything else left to do on this ticket?

i think we need to close this task as the concept is already complete? https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T430055 is the new epic task

@srishakatux FYI , this task is already in done column

Till the rollout happens, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to still use this task for updates. I'd like to continue adding the bi-weekly updates here only. Otherwise, the updates will be fragmented, and it would be nice to see all the progress together in one place.

For any new subtasks, we can use the one you created. That way, the Phabricator tree feature will still let us see how the different phases fit together in one place.

sure, returned ticket to in progress

7 August 2026 Update

• Feedback gathering from the pilot communities continued, with conversations now expanding beyond the initial three contributors. The written feedback received so far has been summarized on Phabricator T428121#12160634, bringing together what participants found useful and where they ran into difficulty using the kit. Alongside this, work began on documentation and outreach infrastructure to support a wider rollout, including a Starter Kit user manual on MediaWiki.org, community office hours to walk contributors through the kit, and a MassMessage campaign to administrators and top editors on small and new wikis. An outreach, entry points and pilot launch strategy (T431657) is being developed to bring these efforts together.

• Several issues raised during pilot testing have now been addressed. The main page customization workflow was simplified based on pilot feedback (T429068), and fixes were made to layout problems that appeared when image heights exceeded their container (T429063), when columns were of uneven height (T429064), and when the homepage layout was viewed on mobile (T429067). Elsewhere in the kit, required user permissions are now surfaced on essential task cards (T430584), mentor profiles display human-readable capacities rather than Wikidata QIDs (T428128), and the admin threshold was separated from the article milestone in the roadmap (T430883). Work continues on remaining issues, including making the HotCat task accessible to non-admins and improving the article creation flow.

• Work is underway on an impact dashboard for the Starter Kit (T430096) to help assess how the kit is being used and what it is contributing to participating wikis. Much of this month's effort went into defining what the dashboard should measure and where those measurements should come from, for example, sourcing main page customizations from on-wiki attestation rather than analytics events (T433819), attributing account creations to Starter Kit recruit links (T433802), and counting kit-initiated work by already-experienced users as part of the kit's reach (T434212). Additional cards for contributions made through the kit (T434225) and essential work done through the kit (T433621), along with a wiki filter (T433618), are in progress.

10 September 2026 Update

• Outreach for the Starter Kit pilot continued with a mass message to 119 administrators across 33 new and small wikis (fewer than 50,000 articles), as well as 8 cross-wiki maintainers, inviting them to try the tool and share feedback. This round built on our earlier outreach efforts, including the main page customization testing in T420075, the administrator outreach in T428121, and wikis represented in the Starter Kit Dashboard.
• We also hosted three community office hours, inviting pilot wiki communities to a live demo of the tool, answering questions, and gathering feedback. We continued having more focused individual conversations with selected users and responding to feedback as contributors tried different Starter Kit workflows. The infobox task has been the most-used task so far, with useful feedback coming from communities including the Tyap Wikipedia, documented here.
• Between May and August 2026, 52 contributors from 46 wikis tried the Starter Kit. More than half held administrator rights. During this period, contributors completed 24 Starter Kit workflows, generating approximately 70 on-wiki contributions. These onboarding attempts are helping us understand how contributors use the different workflows and where we can improve the experience.
• We also continued outreach and engagement through opportunities such as speaking at the African Wikimedia Space, as well as internal conversations with WMF staff to explore potential partnership and collaboration opportunities.

7 October 2026

• Starter Kit has now supported 120 on-wiki contributions, with 37 completed tasks, 97 unique contributors onboarded, and participation from 75 wikis. These figures show continued growth since the September update, as more contributors try the available workflows and use them to make contributions to their wikis.
• Community engagement continued through two regional events. At the Language Diversity Conference in Ghana, an interactive Starter Kit workshop included a live walkthrough, hands-on activities, and feedback discussions with participants. Starter Kit was also presented during the ESEAP Community Call, providing an opportunity to introduce the tool, answer questions, and gather suggestions from community members.
• Feedback from the broader pilot, office hours, and recent community events has helped identify areas for improvement. Contributors highlighted the usefulness of guided workflows, particularly for administrative and technical tasks such as infobox setup. Recurring themes included reducing manual steps, improving task usability and discoverability, integrating Starter Kit more closely with existing wiki workflows, and strengthening language support. More details are available in the Broader pilot / office hours / community feedback (August–September 2026) and Additional community feedback: Language Diversity Conference + ESEAP Community Call summaries on Phabricator.
• Starter Kit was also featured through additional communication channels, including the Diff blog post introducing Starter Kit, Tech News, the CEE Newsletter, and the ESEAP Newsletter.
• Next steps: The next phase of Starter Kit development will focus on addressing high-priority improvements identified through pilot and community feedback, alongside developing four additional essential tasks for the new → small wiki stage. Exploration will also begin into how Starter Kit could support communities transitioning from small → medium wikis.