User:Thepwnco/GuidedTours

Planning for a series of Wikidata:Tours is currently underway and being worked on by FOSS OPW intern Thepwnco in consultation with Bene* and Lydia_Pintscher_(WMDE).

Feedback on implemented tours can be left on their appropriate talk pages. Other comments or suggestions for content to be included in the Wikidata:Tours, can be added the Feedback section of this page.

Planning

Research

For initial stages of planning, see original requirements analysis submitted as part of FOSS OPW application

• possible names for tours - should we use another word for tour like tutorial? Wikipedia Adventure uses "mission"

Requirements

• Tours should be short and sweet - about a similar length of the current Wikidata basics tour (10 sections, average word count per section around 91)
• Include (as much as possible) interactive, instructional content and provide actions or prompt the user with realistic tasks to complete
• Due to challenges implementing on Wikidata, the tours for editing data will take place on testwikidata. It's extremely important to make clear to users that they are sent to another site and not editing on the live site
• As with above, the testwikidata system has newer code than the main site and might be broken every now and then - also important to keep this in mind, perhaps provide notice of it to tour users?
• Simple English
• Attempt to develop concepts/examples/case studies for tours that are as universal as possible - i.e. translatable and relatable to other languages and cultures (note: Wikipedia Adventure used "the Earth" as central concept for missions)
• Be appropriate and accessible to users who have some experience with wikis and Wikimedia projects and those who are completely new (Wikidata being their first foray into this world)

Goals

• Content should provide a basic level of data literacy for participating in Wikidata - i.e. to be interested in helping out, users first need to understand what structured data is and what all the input forms are for! This can draw from Wikidata:Introduction but also needs to be updated/improved
• Content should also convey importance/opportunities of Wikidata (perhaps by making reference to future/current applications of project - Reasonator would be especially good to highlight somehow)
• Users should feel comfortable contributing and entering data by input forms
• Users should be aware of some of the challenges/complications for entering data (e.g. plurality and using qualifiers) as well approaches for finding help and resources for making decisions (e.g. reporting interwiki conflicts)
• Users should be aware of other opportunities for participation beyond data by input forms - for example, translating and task forces
• Users should be encouraged to create an account with Wikidata - and made aware of user access levels/restrictions (for example, unregistered users are not anonymous but identified by IP address - which may be cause for concern - and possible CAPTCHA prompting)
• Users should be provided with tips/resources for finding out how to approach a certain item and searching for supporting information or help e.g. list of all properties, Wikipedians who are also Wikidatans
• Users should be provided with next steps to continue editing, especially at a more personally meaningful level (i.e. beyond use of "Random Item" button)

In scope/out of scope?

Focus

• How to make high-quality edits to Wikidata - meaning item pages with labels, descriptions, and aliases and statements that are rich (contain references, qualifiers, ranks)

Help pages

• Users should feel comfortable using their user pages and user talk pages - and understand how they are key to communicating with others on Wikidata (this is covered in the Wikipedia Adventure and does not differ much from Wikidata usage so may be possible to point users towards that content); additionally, a new Help page was created to explain user options and clarify language preferences and #babel templates
• Users should be made aware that Wikidata is constantly growing/expanding/being worked on - if a property doesn't exist, that might just mean that no one's proposed it yet; ditto item (this is important to mention but perhaps can be covered in more detail in the rest of site documentation)
• introduction to Wikidata purpose, structured data

Out of scope

• Designing for mobile, testing for mobile. Different tools are being designed for this
• content on difference between claims and statements (as per the introductory prezi on Wikidata by Bene*). Unnecessary information for introductory content
• include content on resolving interwiki conflicts. This covered by Help page and sister project documentation
• creating a new item and searching first using item by title search. Point to documentation on this rather than feature in tour.

Proposed future tours

• illustrating Wikidata implementation/integration with Wikipedia?
• Queries
• the significance and applications of the Wikidata project - perhaps through the anatomy of an item page?

Ideas and Possible Tasks

• policies, philosophies, and guiding principles of Wikidata - ideally cover these with tasks or explanations of related concepts
• statements, properties, values (to start, one very straightforward example)
• more advanced: types of values, qualifiers, ranks, references - good candidates for tasks/cases include a time-dependent qualifier (e.g. president for 4-year term), multiple values for populations of a location (from different reference sources), items with no or unknown value
• adding multiple (qualified) values for one property of an item
• have "behind the scenes" tour with information on WikiProjects, user talk pages, revision history for items, other things (project phases, gadgets, contributing datasets, etc)?
• include task of - "what's wrong with this data?" Example could be something like x as President without any time period attached to position/title
• cover/explain little blue symbols beside text entry fields (e.g. normal rank)
• assess learning and comprehension occasionally with multiple choice questions as done with Wikipedia Adventure - i.e. choose most appropriate response/approach for x

Incentives

• would be nice to have additional components or tie-ins built as incentive/awards for completing tours and motivating users. Wikipedia Adventure issues a series of badges...
• one great thing about the Wikipedia Adventure missions was the interactions centered around user talk pages - I realize this is not the major focus of Wikidata:Tours, but think it'd be neat if participation in the tours could result in similar automatic posting of welcome message to user talk page
• next steps/ideas for editing/further reading & documentation to include at end of tours - e.g. Edit Item Suggestions (relating to what users are interested in or have knowledge about); the list of items without labels and/or descriptions (organized by language, available on the Labels and Descriptions Task Force page), Terminator tool (top 1000 labels without descriptions); possibility of using database reports constraint violations (but needs to be made more user-friendly)

Content Outline

Existing tours before project

Tour 1: Wikidata basics (authored by User:Bene*)

Notes after reviewing Wikidata basics tour (on June 2 2014)

• made some brief edits to content (removed duplicated content, changed some of the language, added some examples)
• blurb for tour says it "will introduce you to the basic ideas of Wikidata. You will learn what Wikidata is and find out how structured data works" - however, do not really learn how structured data works after completing tutorial.
• clarify sentence: "To do all this, we need abstract objects representing the things we see in our daily life. These objects are called items in Wikidata" - bit confusing - perhaps something along the lines of "In order to create structure or a data model for something like the sum of knowledge available on Wikipedia, we first need a way of storing representations of the knowledge whether it be abstract concepts like 'childhood' or real-world objects like a 'television'. These representations are called items in Wikidata"
• error message when first tried updating Paris item label in tour on Chrome (able to work in Firefox)
• don't quite understand this statement for descriptions: "Descriptions should not normally begin with initial articles"
• in last step (Congratulations!) there is mention to users that they are working in the sandbox - I think this should be clear from the start, either in pop up or description of tutorial

Possible tours & themes

Editing Wikidata items

Edit item - label, description, alias

Edit item - basic statements (properties, values)

Edit item - statements - references

Edit item - statements - qualifiers

Edit item - statements - ranks

Edit item - statements - special values

Beyond the item page: Understanding Wikidata

Introduction to structured/linked data, applications - instead created as Help page

Wikidata principles and philosophies - included as part of References tour.

Behind the scenes; community decision-making, WikiProjects, finding help

Next steps for sustained contributing - should just be Contribute portal

Content for sister project editors - lot of new content created for Sister projects portal

Scripts for Tours

1. Wikidata:Tours/Items (now live)
2. Wikidata:Tours/Statements (now live)
3. Wikidata:Tours/References (ready for implementation)
4. Wikidata:Tours/Qualifiers (ready for implementation)
5. Wikidata:Tours/Ranks (ready for implementation)
6. Wikidata:Tours/Special Values (ready for implementation)
7. Wikidata:Tours/Behind_the_Scenes

Feedback

I miss the multilingual part on the tours. I think for now if you replace "Earth" by {{Q|2}} and "third planet in the Solar System" with {{autodescription|Q2}} etc. it will not confuse people whou have set their language to other than English. HenkvD (talk) 06:32, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi, the tours are designed to be easy translatable. However, we want to get some feedback first so we don't waste translators' time when some general things well change. However, thanks for the suggestion. -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 10:21, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Production

Technical Implementation

• keep in mind upcoming changes to GuidedTours extension - for reference see here

Translation

Tour 1 & 2 have been marked up for translation.

Promotion

Bene* has written a blog post for WMDE about the Guided Tours: http://blog.wikimedia.de/2014/08/09/guided-tours-and-wikidata-how-to-explain-a-complex-project-and-encourage-new-editors/

Testing

Note: feedback from user testing is for both Items and Statements tours unless otherwise specified

Person #1

• "start with the first tutorial" button confusing - "first tutorial" and items tour seem to cover the same content (this has since been changed)
• for Statements tour, tried to first click on text (answer) for multiple choice question; wasn't clear to just click next arrow for answer (on Wikipedia Adventure, it's actually possible to select the answer)
  • needs more complicated implementation. Perhaps a feature missing in guided tours itself. How is it done in Wikipedia Adventure? -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• for Statements tour, is it possible to have the entity suggester delayed or suppressed? It is a bit overwhelming to have all the pop-ups at once and it kind of distracts from the property field
  • it might be a bit overwhelming but the property suggester appears always so the only option is to delay it. However, this will become a bit hacky... -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• content ok

Person #2

• no user account with Wikidata/WMF so each time user enters data during the tour they see the annoying terms & conditions pop-up
  • agree. Perhaps we should even tell the user what this terms & conditions pop-up means so that they understand what they do and can click "I agree" so that it won't pop up any more. -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• it'd be nice to have back buttons
  • missing feature in guided tours. -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• not sure when to click on next arrow and when to perform task
  • see below -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• content ok

Person #3

• "it feels a bit stressful to have two open options at the same time when going through a linear tutorial" - for example, when the tour tell you to type something in and there's also an arrow to continue with the tutorial, it's not clear if you should first add data or first click the arrow. It is also not clear that it doesn't make a difference which one you do first or if clicking the arrow to continue will do something for you (like "save" so you don't have to do)
  • maybe we should hide the arrow in that case? What if the user does not know what to do and even misses the arrow? -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• since it's a tutorial, is it necessary to have the little disclaimer about edits pop up each time? I understand having it the first time but perhaps it can be suppressed for the rest of the tour
  • see above -- Bene* ^t_a^l_k 20:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• content ok

Proposed Changes based on Testing Feedback

Multiple Choice

The Wikipedia Adventure supports multiple choice questions by just providing a "select" link under each answer that leads to a different subpage of the tour. For example, the 4th mission provides a multiple choice option on what best summarizes the neural point of view policy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWA/4/NPOV?tour=twa4&step=12. It looks like this:

"Which of these options would be a good reply?"

answer1

[select] (link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWA/4/NPOV/1)

answer2

[select] (link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWA/4/NPOV/2)

answer3

[select] (link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TWA/4/NPOV/3)

The correct choice then links back to the next step of the tour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TWA/4/Start?tour=twa4&step=13)

You can see the js at w:MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-twa2.js.

Terms of Use

I'll write up some content about both the terms of use pop-up and the logging IP pop-up. I'm thinking of just putting an alert box (similar to what Wikipedia Adventure does) on the Tours homepage because otherwise the notice would in theory have to be added to all tours.

Property Suggester

Let's leave as it—it reflects accurate usage of the site in any case and I think it will seem less overwhelming once we take care of the terms & conditions pop-up.

Back buttons

re: a missing feature in Guided Tours. The Wikipedia Adventure does feature back buttons so I looked into it. It appears that 'back' is not defined as a helper included for common behaviours (such as action: 'next' and action: 'end') but according to the extension page it is possible to to 'specify arbitrary action buttons.' This looks like what the Wikipedia Adventure has done, for example step 4 of a tour would look like this:

buttons: [ { name: '←', action: 'externalLink', url: mw.util.getUrl( 'Special:MyTalk/TWA' ) + '?tour=twa2&step=3' } ],

Workflows

I can go through the content and add more explicit instructions when it's not obvious what to click first (e.g. click next or click edit, etc.). It also seems like it's possible to add automatic skip behaviour so that next arrows will go away if a user has started editing. See mw:Extension:GuidedTour/Write_an_extension_tour for more on this

Future Sustainability & Maintenance

• need plan/schedule for making sure content is current, gets updated with site changes