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

[Oliver Keyes]

On 11 March 2012 09:30, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>wrote:

> On 11 March 2012 08:56, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Still not happy with this formulation. I think the sentences contradict
> each other. You are trying to fix, you say,
>
> *potential disappointment of new editors;
> *overwork of patrollers.
>
> Unless you discourage some contributors, the volume of contributions would
> be the same? The nature of the contributions would not necessarily be the
> same. I would certainly be leading off with "To avoid disappointment at the
> outcome of our process, please take a moment ...".
>
>
> That would be an excellent way to word it. I disagree that numbers and
quality have to necessarily conflict; what we have at the moment is an
interface that is:

*Unfamiliar
*Unintuitive
*Failing to provide sufficient guidance on what is desireable in a new
article.

The third element is, arguably, the source of at least part of the woes
that come with new page patrol; quality is not high. What we want to do is
test the hypothesis that by better educating new editors and potential
editors, we can dissuade people from writing bad articles and encourage
good-faith new editors to put a bit more work into theirs. Now, I fully
agree that, on its own, this would bring down the raw numbers of new
articles. I think that's a given. That's where the other problems with the
interface - how unfamiliar it looks to other websites, how confusing it is
- comes in, combined with the lack of guidance. I would hypothesise (and
again, that's what this is; testing hypotheses) that this brings down the
number of new contributions before people have typed a word: it's
confusing, it's unfamiliar, and it's scary - I wouldn't be suprised to find
that those people who actually write articles are a tiny number compared to
those who intend to, or those who are unaware they can but could if they
were *made* aware. If we provide better guidance and make it a nicer
environment, we could see raw numbers increase as well as quality.

Now, as said a few emails back, and repeatedly here: this is just an
experiment. It could be both quality and numbers go up, it could be one
goes up and the other goes down, it could be we have no impact whatsoever.
But quality and numbers are not, by default, in conflict; the very lack of
guidance that leads to people writing articles in ignorance may well be
leading to others not writing them at all.



-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation