Recently the tech team at WMF has deployed a couple experimental tools for gathering feedback on the experiences of new editors. With MoodBar, new editors can quickly and easily provide feedback on their editing experience by entering a 140 character comment. All these comments are posted as a feed on the Feedback Dashboard. Since then, over 8,500 of pieces of feedback have been created by thousands of users. You can watch stats roll in real-time on this report.

Today we are introducing new functionality that will enable experienced editors to easily respond to this feedback. Experienced editors who want to help new editors through their initial few edits may now respond in-line without leaving the dashboard. The new editor (who left the initial comment about being happy, sad, or confused) will then receive the reply on their talk page. This feature will make it easier for experienced users to lend a helping hand to new users, guiding them through their initial experiences editing Wikipedia.

Steven Walling and Maryana Pinchuk have also started a Response Team of experienced editors willing to help out. So far, over 30 editors have joined. If you’re an editor, please consider helping out by signing up on the Response Team page.

Steven and Maryana will also be holding an “office hours” this Sunday, December 4th, for anyone interested in learning more about how to respond to new editor feedback and discussing the feature. If you’re interested, please attend!

Howie Fung and Brandon Harris
Wikimedia Foundation Tech Team