Hey all,
Today we deployed a new feature to English Wikipedia -- a Draft
namespace.[1] (For those not familiar, namespaces on our wiki are how we
separate types of pages, like articles versus discussion pages.)
There isn't anything technically that exciting about this new namespace
yet. One key feature is that it is not indexed, however, meaning drafts are
hidden from readers using most search engines.
However, we think this idea show a lot of promise. In the future, we plan
to experiment with additional software support for this namespace,
providing tools to help create, review, and publish drafts with minimal
headache. If encouraging new users to create their first articles in draft
mode first really improves their retention and overall experience on
Wikipedia, we do plan on rolling this out beyond English.
You can learn more about our evolving ideas on mediawiki.org,[2] and help
answer open questions we've put to community members on Wikipedia
talk:Drafts on English Wikipedia. Please participate!
1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drafts
2.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Draft_namespace
--
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/