[WikiEN-l] Article Landing Pages - functional prototype to test and comment on

[Oliver Keyes]

On 11 March 2012 08:33, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>wrote:

> On 11 March 2012 03:37, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> >  The reason we're starting off by seeing
> > if we can improve quality and inform newbies with Special:NewPages rather
> > than Special:RecentChanges is, firstly, because it's a lot easier to
> trial
> > there (less stuff going on), and secondly because we'd been led to
> believe
> > that in the eyes of the community, new pages can be a serious problem.
> One
> > of the most vocal editors telling us this was an issue was you.
> >
> > To clarify, it might be a help to state what it is that is apparently
> broken that you are trying to fix. If it is the existing low barrier to
> article creation by one-and-all, it is worth pointing out that wiki systems
> were designed to have such low barriers.
>

A low barrier to contribution is not a problem. What we are trying to fix
is the overwork of patrollers and the fact that new editors go into the
article creation process unaware of what to expect and ignorant of policy,
which understandably ends up leading to disappointment. This is set out
fairly clearly in my initial message, which also linked through to
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_Creation_Workflow/Landing_System,
which has a full rationale and hypothesis.
-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation