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Finalize mobile web section editing dead-end experiment design
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Description

This task involves the work of defining the requirements that will come to shape/define the controlled experiment of the mobile web section editing dead-end controlled experiment (T409112)

Open questions

  • What (if any) requirements beyond those listed in the === Experiment requirements need to be defined?
    • All requirements have been defined as of 3 Dec 2025.

Experiment requirements

  • The following new events will need to be added/instrumented:
  • The experiment will be run on the following wikis:
  • Groups of people that will be included in the experiment:
    • This experiment analysis will focus on registered users with 100 or fewer cumulative edits and logged-out users.
    • The current recommended approach is to make everyone eligible for the experiment and then focus the analysis on logged-out users or registered users who have an edit count of 100 or fewer edits at first exposure.
  • Bucketing logic/criteria:
    • Bucketing should include both registered and unregistered users at all included Wikipedias [i]. This will require the use of edge-unique as the identifier type. Note: This means enrollment will be per-device.
    • All users, who are editing a mobile web main namespace page (NS:0) using the visual editor, at any of the Wikipedias should have a 50% chance of being included/bucketed into the A/B test's control or treatment group.
      • Note: people who initiate a full-page edit using mobile web in the main namespace page (NS:0) using the visual editor will also be included in the experiment. Although, their behavior will be excluded from the metrics we will compute to evaluate the impact of the intervention.
      • We're including this additional data so that we have the option of comparing section editing to full-page editing.
    • The treatment group should have the new Mobile section editing button enabled when a user opens the section editor. The control group will not and have the default section editing experience.
    • Each device should remain in the same test group for the duration of the test (and across sessions and pages). Note: If the cookie is cleared manually or automatically – by, for example, a privacy enhanced browser – the client is issued a new wmf-uniq cookie, and they may or may not end up enrolled or even assigned to the same group.

i. The 100 largest Wikipedias, as measured by monthly editors per 2025 wiki comparison data.

Test instructions

Console command to force experiment:

mw.xLab.overrideExperimentGroup('fy25-26-we-1-1-19-mobile-section-dead-end', 'treatment');

Done

  • Answers to all "Open questions" are documented
  • All Experiment requirements are defined and documented
  • Update https://mpic.wikimedia.org/create-experiment with name of experiment and configuration values (≥24 hours before start of test)

Event Timeline

@ppelberg: a couple of clarifying questions to help inform bucketing requirements:

  1. The current measurment plan speicifies "user with ≤100 cumulative edits". To confirm, should this include logged-out users as well?
  2. There's a couple of approaches to how we limit the audience to newcomers (user with ≤100 cumulative edits)
    1. As mentioned in this thread, we could make everyone eligible for the experiment and then focus the analysis on logged-out users or registered users who have an edit count of 100 or fewer edits at first exposure. This would show the new edit full page button to all users entering section editing mode but we would limit our analytics to the target group (user with ≤100 cumulative edits).
    2. Limit the experiment and treatment exposure to newcomers (user with ≤100 cumulative edits) at first exposure so experienced editors entering the experiment never see the new full page edit button.
MNeisler updated the task description. (Show Details)
MNeisler updated the task description. (Show Details)

@ppelberg: a couple of clarifying questions to help inform bucketing requirements:

  1. The current measurment plan speicifies "user with ≤100 cumulative edits". To confirm, should this include logged-out users as well?

Great spot. Yes, we do want logged-out users to be included in the experiment, if possible.

  1. There's a couple of approaches to how we limit the audience to newcomers (user with ≤100 cumulative edits)
    1. As mentioned in this thread, we could make everyone eligible for the experiment and then focus the analysis on logged-out users or registered users who have an edit count of 100 or fewer edits at first exposure. This would show the new edit full page button to all users entering section editing mode but we would limit our analytics to the target group (user with ≤100 cumulative edits).
    2. Limit the experiment and treatment exposure to newcomers (user with ≤100 cumulative edits) at first exposure so experienced editors entering the experiment never see the new full page edit button.

If the second approach [i] does not add complexity, I'd prefer we limit exposure of the feature to the people the intervention is expressly meant to impact.

With this said, I think T409990 is the sort of feature that volunteers, across experience levels, will value. As such, if it's more straightforward to do the first approach [ii], that's fine with me.


i. "Limit the experiment and treatment exposure to newcomers (user with ≤100 cumulative edits) at first exposure so experienced editors entering the experiment never see the new full page edit button."
ii. "...we could make everyone eligible for the experiment and then focus the analysis on logged-out users or registered users who have an edit count of 100 or fewer edits at first exposure."

The experiment will be run on the following wikis:
All Wikipedias

As per our docs, you can technically run experiments on up to 50 wikis. Without the m. domain, this might now be 100 -- I will check and get back to you.

As per https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T408444 (and our now updated docs) - is now up to 100 wikis per experiment.

As per https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T408444 (and our now updated docs) - is now up to 100 wikis per experiment.

Understood. Thank you for confirming, Julie. I've updated the task description to reflect the wikis we'd like to be included in the experiment.

Having solidified the Experiment requirements in offline discussion with @MNeisler, this ticket is now ready for Editing Engineering to implement and Experimentation Platform to QA once patch(es) are ready.

Per offline discussion, with 1210320 being merged, all that's left to be done here is: