Hey all,
I just wanted to let those interested know that I've published two user tests I ran last week of the "getting started" guided tour. You can watch the videos and read my preliminary notes at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Guided_tours/User_testing
Keep in mind that some of the confusion here was due to the fact that, because we were running a randomized A/B test of the time, we had to send users directly to a test article. This means they lacked some of the context and definitely some of motivation that a user who normally decided to click a task on Special:GettingStarted would have. (I edited the test script for the second user to try and alleviate some of this.)
In any case, we still derived quite a bit of valuable feedback about ways to improve this tour and guided tours in general. I'll be running more tests of both the tour and the new Special:GettingStarted landing page soon.
Have a good weekend,