These configuration settings are defined by each wiki under "Add a link (Structured task)" via Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits

Feel free to ask Growth engineers questions here or in #talk-to-growth.

No change last week; hoping to take a look this week.

This got deprioritised last week and our sprint got extended. It's at the top of my list, unless I get reprioritised again.

I'm removing this ticket from the current sprint board as other tasks have emerged as higher priority.

The Add a link task is a combination of systems:

1. The link recommendation service, which regularly caches suggested links for edited articles
2. The Growth homepage that suggests specific articles to add links to based on this data
3. A VisualEditor integration that takes data from the Growth Experiments tasks API and displays a custom target that lets you add these links

In terms of integrations, it'd be easiest to directly use the recommendations API. It decouples us from needing to be part of a suggested activity session.

Here's a userscript that does that: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:DLynch_(WMF)/EditCheckSuggestedLinks.js

Change #1251566 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Create AddSuggestedLinkCheck

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1251566

In terms of integrations, it'd be easiest to directly use the recommendations API. It decouples us from needing to be part of a suggested activity session.

Ideally, we can decouple link suggestions from the Homepage and the Suggested Edits feed. However, I am hesitant to decouple link suggestions from the associated Community Configuration settings at Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits.

Because link edits are so easy to perform, certain safeguards are in place to maintain edit quality and reduce patroller fatigue. For example, on English Wikipedia the Community Configuration settings ensure that we never suggest adding links to sections such as Notes, Sources, or Further Reading. Newcomers are also limited to completing 15 link suggestions per day.

I suspect that most experienced editors will not think about the origin of a suggestion (Suggestion Mode versus Suggested Edits) as two distinct systems. Instead, they are more likely to see them as different entry points that should follow the same underlying logic.

^ so, what that's missing is any sort of automatic importing of the add-link community config.

{F72848693}

This does all seem relevant and reusable if we wanted to, though it might be a bit strange deciding where to layer it into the existing edit check config. Particularly since that implementation doesn't actually use the GrowthExperiments homepage/sessions it might make more sense to just let people configure it via the regular edit check config file.

Newcomers are also limited to completing 15 link suggestions per day.

This one doesn't seem like a great fit for editcheck as-is. I'd think it makes more sense to think of it as a configuration applying to the Homepage, where it's a way to stop people from burning out on a particular type of suggestion. In the editcheck context, it's more thought of as "I'm on this page, what could I do to it?"

@KStoller-WMF did you wind up making an API for fetching a given community configuration? If so, it'd be easy to mix this in. If not, more work would be needed.

This one doesn't seem like a great fit for editcheck as-is. I'd think it makes more sense to think of it as a configuration applying to the Homepage, where it's a way to stop people from burning out on a particular type of suggestion.

Honestly, the primary concern is preventing patrollers and experienced editors from burning out while reviewing these edits.

I am open to exploring different approaches, but as Suggestion Mode scales on larger wikis, I expect it will encounter the same “patroller overload” challenges that the Growth team has already seen.

In practice, the Community Configuration limits that Growth introduced emerged as a middle-ground compromise with patrollers. The idea was that it is better for the task to remain available to newcomers, with reasonable limits in place, than for the feature to be turned off entirely.

@ppelberg we might want to connect and discuss, and see what Suggestion Mode can learn from community feedback about Suggested Edits, especially Structured Tasks: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Growth/Personalized_first_day/Structured_tasks/Community_feedback

did you wind up making an API for fetching a given community configuration?

I think the answer is no, but perhaps @Urbanecm_WMF can add details.

(Insofar as the spike-investigation has happened.)

Next steps

• @ppelberg to, well, define what happens next w/ input from Kirsten.

First off: @DLynch this script you wrote seems to work well! [i]

Now, to the points @KStoller-WMF helpfully raised, it seems like we need to decide the following:

1. To what extent (if any) will the configuration values for "Add a link" when it is surfaced in the Homepage and Suggested Edits feed deviate from those when it is surfaced within Suggestion Mode?
2. Related to "1.", in the time between now and when we enable volunteers to configure Edit Checks/Suggestions via Community Configuration (T372927), how (if at all) will the edit check config file be able to fetch the relevant "Add a link" configuration values from the Community Configuration extension?

I think "1." will inform "2." Accordingly, I've added this topic to the meeting agenda Kirsten and I have scheduled for next week.

In parallel, I've created T421328 for the work of implementing "Add a link" within Suggestion Mode as an experimental feature and added the 2 questions above there as well.

i. While we'd likely want to update the card to include i) guidance about what people ought to consider before proceeding with inserting a link and ii) a way for people to inspect the link the interface is suggesting, the general user experience feels clear and simple to me. Nicely done.

@DLynch: to the broader topic of resolving this ticket, how (if at all) would you want edit the provisional conclusion I'm drawing from all of this (see below)?

Provisional conclusion
While there is still some uncertainty around the UX that could add complexity, surfacing "Add a link" as a suggestion within Suggestion Mode is relatively straightforward. The main open questions here have to do with community configuration.

@ppelberg I think that putting it in as an experimental suggestion sounds reasonable. It'd give us more chances to experience it on-wiki, and the configuration could be improved before we move it out of experimental status. I've attached the patch to the experimental ticket, as such.

Change #1251566 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Create AddSuggestedLinkCheck

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1251566