[Foundation-l] "How many articles have you created?"

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 10 April 2011 22:56, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> At one point there were "anon tips" above the tabs in Monobook. These were
>> text-only snippets that appeared only for logged-out users. For example one
>> snippet was, "Have questions? [[Wikipedia:Questions|Find out how to ask
>> questions and get answers.]]" The old code is available here:
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=288720468>. It might make sense
>> to implement something like that again.
> 
> Yes, that's the sort of thing. What happened and what do we need to
> put those back?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=390494501#Anontips_banner

What's needed is that there needs to be smarter logic to avoid multiple
banners (i.e., disable the anon tips when CentralNotice or the local
sitenotice or anonnotice is active) and there needs to be new content.
 
>> There needs to be serious consideration of not further diluting the potency
>> of banner messages and of not annoying users.
> 
> Would user tests measuring annoyance help?
> 
> We could have the banners just for anons and have switching them off
> as a user option!

Maybe. More importantly you would need someone to actively act on widespread
annoyance, though. I think disabling the banners automatically is preferable
to requiring user interaction (even if it is just a user preference update).
If you were putting up a banner about how to add references to an article,
don't display to users with wgEditCount > 1000. If you were putting up a
banner about a vote that requires more than 500 votes, don't display to
users with wgEditCount < 500. And of course individual banner disability
would be nice (similar to the current English Wikipedia watchlist notices).
This avoids the problem of people hiding all banners with a JavaScript
gadget (binary options suck).

MZMcBride